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Government and Corbyn Spar Over a “Gigabit Britain” Broadband Future

Thursday, Mar 3rd, 2016 (1:48 pm) - Score 1,525

The leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn MP, has claimed that broadband connectivity in the United Kingdom is being held back by “government foot-dragging and ideological dithering,” which he suggests can only be improved by pushing more public money towards fibre optic services.

In fairness the existing Broadband Delivery UK programme is doing a reasonable job of helping to bring superfast broadband (24Mbps+) capable connections to 95-96% of the UK by 2017/18, although there’s still a question mark over how best to cater for the final 3-5%.

At this stage we’re expecting a mixed technology approach for the final 3-5% and greater reliance on smaller alternative network (altnet) ISPs, but a firm strategy is still missing and it remains to be seen whether the forthcoming Budget 2016 announcement will offer anything constructive on that front.

Meanwhile commercial investment from Virgin Media and BT (Openreach) looks set to see 200-500Mbps+ capable broadband connections being delivered to around 60-70% of the United Kingdom by 2025 (we suspect Virgin Media’s domestic cable network may be pushing in to Gigabit land by then), but that does leave another big question mark over the viability of deploying similar “ultrafast” services to the final 30-40%.

Last week’s decision by Ofcom to give rivals greater access to BT’s national UK cable ducts / poles could help to fill some of the current and future gaps (here), but it’s very plausible that a future Government may still need to support the wider roll-out of ultrafast connectivity with more state aid and in that sense Corbyn’s speech to the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) isn’t surprising.

Jeremy Corbyn MP said:

“The Centre for Economics and Business ranks the UK thirteenth on the value of its infrastructure, behind every other G7 country bar Canada. Enterprise and innovation cannot flourish when our roads and railways, ports and airports are lagging behind our competitors. But infrastructure means the digital economy as well.

Our digital and communications market, as Ofcom recognised last week, is simply not working. Chile, Estonia and Iceland all have a higher percentage of premises connected to fibre-optic broadband. Businesses simply cannot expand, particularly in rural areas, without improvements to our digital economy.

The evidence is clear that only the public sector and public investment can guarantee the super-fast broadband network in every part of Britain the essential low-cost connections people and businesses need in a 21st century economy. As it is, government foot-dragging and ideological dithering is holding digital Britain back.”

At this point we should say that senior members of the Labour Party have recently gone on record to call for BT to be split from control of their national telecoms network (Openreach) and in 2014 a report from Labour activists proposed a vague £10bn plan that would deliver 1000Mbps (1Gbps) broadband to all, with 10Gps connections for business hubs like Tech City (here).

Ofcom’s Strategic Review also appeared to favour a future of Gigabit connectivity, although there will be no end of debate about whether their approach can deliver that or not. But funnily enough even the Government now seem to be eyeing a “gigabit Britain.”

During a debate in the House of Commons yesterday, which focused on the issue of urban broadband, Ben Howlett (Conservative MP for Bath) asked whether the Government agreed with the logic of going “directly to the installation of ultrafast broadband” and skipping right past the “superfast” target.

Ed Vaizey, Digital Economy Minister, replied:

“It is very important to set realistic targets. That is why we dropped Labour’s pathetic 2 megabits policy and went to 24 megabits. Now is the time to start looking at a gigabit Britain. I utterly endorse what my hon. Friend says. Let us not get stuck in the past with Labour; let us go forward to the future.”

It’s interesting that Ed Vaizey should so specifically mention “gigabit” Britain, particular as they previously only touted a longer term ambition to foster “ultra-fast” broadband (defined by them as 100Mbps+) to “nearly all the homes in the country” (here), although “gigabit” tends to mean speeds that are at least ten times faster than even that (1000Mbps+).

As ever with politics, take everything that MPs say with a huge pinch of salt until somebody spells out the details in a clear, funded and official policy.

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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