UK Businesses Seek “Ultrafast” Broadband to Overcome Obstacles

Virgin Media Business has published a new research report from Oxford Economics, which hints that an extra £92bn and 1 million jobs could be added to the UK economy if businesses fully embraced the power of digital communications. One of the biggest boosts could come from faster broadband.

The report – The UK’s £92 billion Digital Opportunity – appears to have based its findings on interviews from over 1,000 senior executives from across the country (representing around 470,000 workers) in order to understand the impact of digital solutions and skills on their worlds.

Unsurprisingly one of the most preferred solutions to help build digital capability identified by respondents was “faster and more reliable broadband“. Some 54% identified this as a solution that would help overcome obstacles and 66% agreed that it was likely to be adopted within the next 3 years.

Elsewhere 46% also highlighted the need for better education of digital skills in schools and universities (45% expected this to in-place within the next 3 years) and 41% called for less regulation and government interference (only 35% expected this to happen in the next 3 years).

The report also suggested that one way to support businesses would be to help promote the coverage and roll-out of better technical solutions, such as by “[accelerating] the widespread availability of ultrafast broadband and [supporting] the development of key technical standards.”

Both Virgin Media and BT are currently either working or planning to deploy ultrafast broadband (usually means 100Mbps+ capable speeds) technologies across much of the United Kingdom by 2020, although at present this is mostly focused on dense urban areas in cities and towns.

However it should be said that the report doesn’t really make a clear distinction between different broadband connection types (everything is just “broadband”, no mention of leased lines, FTTC, ADSL, DOCSIS etc.) and their impact for different business sizes, with many of the questions being a bit too generalised.