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UK Small Businesses Repeat Demand for 10Mbps Broadband USO

Thursday, Sep 10th, 2015 (9:44 am) - Score 886

The Federation of Small Businesses has today published a new telecoms focused report that once again calls upon the Government to introduce a plan for “ultrafast broadband” and a new Universal Service Obligation (USO) that would deliver a minimum Internet speed of 10Mbps to all.

At this point we should say that the March 2015 Budget announcement already proposed a USO that could raise the legal entitlement to a basic service from dial-up speeds (around 56Kbps) to 5Mbps, although at present this is less of a commitment and more of a promise to review whether it’s possible.

On top of that the Government also promised to set out a “new ambition that ultrafast broadband of at least 100 Megabits per second should be available to nearly all UK premises,” although BT’s commercial G.fast roll-out and Virgin Media’s cable expansion look likely to do most of the leg work for this by reaching around 60-70% of premises.

Never the less the FSB’s ‘REASSURED, OPTIMISED, TRANSFORMED‘ report, which among other things found that 99% of SMEs viewed the Internet as being highly important to their business and 51% already offer services online, clearly feels as if the Government could go further.

Mike Cherry, FSB Policy Director, said:

Large numbers of small firms are using new digital technology to revolutionise the way they do business, but the market still has barriers stopping firms from seizing these opportunities. The success of the digital revolution has led to ever higher expectations from businesses and consumers which at times the market struggles to deliver. Business customers feel confused by the complexity of the market and struggle to assess how new services would benefit their business.

A voluntary code of practice will help simplify matters and build trust between business customers and service providers. It will also allow small firms to better understand what services are available and how they can integrate these into their future business strategy. Getting this right will provide a boost to future economic growth and productivity.”

Summary of the FSB’s Key Broadband Recommendations

* The delivery of a 10Mbps USO and a plan for ultrafast broadband: The Government should follow through on plans to introduce a USO, which should be set at 10Mbps. Small business premises should be explicitly included within these targets. This recommendation matches that of successive Ofcom reports. A delivery plan for ultra fast broadband should be published as soon as practicable.

* Increased action to drive awareness of superfast availability: Suppliers and local authorities should invest more in raising awareness of infrastructure availability which is currently low among many small businesses. Our data shows that when small businesses are aware about the availability of superfast broadband in their area, the take up of superfast broadband is significantly elevated.

* A new Community Voucher Scheme: The FSB has been supportive of the Broadband Connection Voucher Scheme; as funds begin to run out for this project, the Government needs to consider new approaches. Using the lessons learnt from the Connection Voucher Scheme, the Government should establish a new Community Voucher Scheme. This should be available in both urban and rural areas, be easy to understand and allow for the simple aggregation of vouchers. It should be accompanied by a targeted advertising campaign to increase awareness and drive demand for this scheme.

* Further steps to improve mobile coverage: Any further steps which the Government can take to incentivise mobile operators to improve the level of geographic coverage will help small businesses and improve their ability to rely on their mobile phone while travelling or working in more rural areas. This is also important in the devolved nations, where mobile coverage is significantly lower than in England. Much of this can be attributed to topography and lower population density in these areas. At the same time, small businesses in these areas will continue to struggle to make full use of mobile services as long as they cannot rely on a reliable mobile service.

* A new Code of Practice for business customers: We support Ofcom’s decision to introduce a new Broadband Code of Practice focussing on download speeds. This will improve transparency and help small business consumers navigate the telecoms market. Across different quality of service areas, increased information would also help small businesses to effectively make the decisions they need to take to comfortably engage with the telecoms market. We believe that an enhanced Code of Practice, covering more quality of service areas, would provide further benefits to small businesses. This new Code could include additional protections and commitments from communications providers on enhanced information sharing, contract transparency, fault repair and installation times.

Aside from those the FSB’s report, which represents a fairly comprehensive industry wish-list, also calls for business broadband suppliers to commit to delivering minimum standards on speeds, reliability and the transparency of customer information (enhanced information on installation times etc.) and contracts.

On top of that it calls for ISPs to be challenged to advertise minimum speeds as opposed to the current practice of advertising maximum possible speeds. It’s worth pointing out that most residential focused providers already promote “typical” speeds (i.e. those achievable by the top 10% of customers) and an estimate speed-range when consumers sign-up. But advertising a minimum speed could potentially also become very confusing.

Similarly the idea of a 10Mbps USO is all well and good, but if the Government ends up cheating by saying it can be delivered via inferior Satellite solutions then it won’t make a huge difference in rural areas. On the flip side imposing a 10Mbps USO on fixed lines would carry a big cost and end-users may end up having to bear the brunt of it.

Otherwise many of the other proposals are already being developed by Ofcom and the FSB’s calls have been made before. For example, at the start of this year they also called for a minimum broadband speed of 10Mbps to be supplied to all business premises by 2018/19 and for a pledge to deliver minimum speeds of 100Mbps to all by 2030. At least in the case of the 10Mbps USO, the FSB has Ofcom’s support.

As usual it’s easy to think up a number and plonk it onto a piece of paper, albeit much more difficult to show how that could actually be achieved in a practical and economic sense. Never the less time has moved on and the Government’s original non-binding 2Mbps Universal Service Commitment (USC) certainly seems to be a bit past its sell by date.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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