The East of England Director for BT , Peter McCarthy-Ward , has warned that the government’s commitment to deliver a minimum broadband speed of 2Mbps to virtually every household in the UK by 2012 (USC - Universal Service Commitment) could be missed in Norfolk. McCarthy-Ward was speaking at a Friday night conference on Shaping Norfolk's Future (SNF).


McCarthy-Ward continued on to warn that money from the European Regional Development Fund and the 50p per month tax on all fixed phone lines (Next Generation Fund) would not be enough to bridge the gap sooner. The Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk, Norman Lamb, promptly responded: "It smacks of a collective failure of ambition by all those responsible."

Chris Starkie, CEO of SNF, said he was not surprised by what McCarthy-Ward had to say. However Starkie added that he would like to "see a minimum of 10Mbps across Norfolk in urban and rural areas," though he did not make any specific proposals for how to do this. Happily everybody was in agreement that the current timetable is far too slow, which looks nice on paper but doesn’t actually get anything done.

Sadly some of the issues being faced in Norfolk are not unique and many regions around the country will face serious problems in their attempts to achieve the government’s 2012 target. We fear that in some cases this could lead to the adoption of satellite services as a quick-fix. However satellite hardware is costly, usage allowances are often very low, performance can be extremely variable and latency is always high.