BSG Warns Against Turning UK Home Broadband into a Utility Service

The Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), which advises the Government on matters of fast Internet connectivity, has warned that the recent calls for broadband to be officially identified as a utility service may be misguided.

A recent report from the House of Lords Digital Skills Committee (here) recommended that one way to both facilitate universal Internet access and remove “not-spots” in urban areas might be for broadband connectivity to be designated as a utility service.

Most utility companies are considered to be statutory undertakers, which have a statutory right or duty to install, inspect, maintain, repair or replace apparatus in or under the street in primary legislation. The recommendation won support, but some fear that turning broadband into a utility might be more thorns than roses.

Matthew Evans, CEO of the BSG, said:

“It may not guarantee universal availability – it is estimated that some 10% of homes are currently not connected to the main gas grid, with little prospect of many of them being able to do so. It may not deliver on lower prices either. The average monthly household spend for telecoms has fallen from £91 in 2008 to £81 today – all at a time when the availability and take-up of new technologies has increased. For understandable reasons, this is not the case for utilities.

Traditional utilities have a single monopoly infrastructure supplier, with services delivered over the top. In telecoms, this may well be sensible in some areas where the infrastructure investment case is more difficult, but would we want to replicate it across the country? Doing so would threaten the competitive environment where it is healthy and undermine investment incentives for BT and Virgin Media, which are expanding their networks, as well as the innovative approaches of CityFibre and others.

Digital connectivity is becoming integral to our lives – indeed it is as important as a utility – but regulating it as such would mark a major intervention into the market, likely deterring investment, whilst adding to the regulatory burden. This is the opposite of what we should be pursuing.”

Instead Evans suggested that we should be making it both “easier and cheaper to deploy and upgrade digital infrastructure“, such as through changes to the current planning regime and Electronic Communications Code (ECC). The latter option is now being consulted upon (here) and the former has arguably already been tackled as part of the Infrastructure Bill and similar legislation.

In related news the Government will shortly publish the outcome of last year’s Digital Communications Infrastructure Strategy (DCIS) consultation (here and here), which aims to design a way forward and ensure that the United Kingdom, over the next 10-15 years, delivers the “best connectivity” for phone, broadband and mobile services etc. At present identifying broadband as a utility does not appear to form part of that equation.