The CMA (part of BCS), the UK's premier membership organisation for ICT professionals, has today claimed that neither of the universal rural broadband strategies put forward by the Conservative and Labour Parties will achieve their goals "quickly or comprehensively" enough.

This week it emerged that the owners of a bed and breakfast business in Cumbria were given the chance to upgrade their Internet service to broadband at a cost of £45,000 because the process would have meant installing new equipment for their village—which was already at capacity for broadband users (here).

The CMA sights this as an example of why things need to change, calling it a, "vivid illustration of the poverty of thought and action that is serving UK businesses so badly." It is therefore calling for two allegedly distinct, but related actions:

* A clear commitment from all main political parties to implementing universal access to affordable, high-speed, symmetrical [same speed of service for both upload and downloads] broadband before 2017.

* Positive encouragement of local authorities and businesses to invest in online services and social infrastructure, to take advantage of universal access to broadband. This could be achieved, for example, by favouring business plans that specify web-based services. Such plans would be supported through positive action by both Regulator and Government, and would allow return on investment to be tracked.

The Conservative Party recently pledged to get 100Mbps broadband into the "majority" of the UK’s homes by 2017, and proposes using part of the BBC’s Licence fee (3.5%) to help fund this. By contrast the Labour Party has already announced its intention for a 50p +vat a month tax on every fixed landline to pay for the roll-out of next generation broadband to 90% of the country by 2017. Both will focus on rural areas.

In addition Labour has also set aside approximately £200m to help make broadband download speeds of 2Mbps available to everybody in the country by 2012 (Universal Service Commitment). However there is no clear commitment to making sure that the chosen technologies would offer a reliable, affordable, flexible or even low latency connection.


Ofcom's current working plan consultation for 2010-11 includes how best to implement regulation to support effective competition and investment in super fast broadband. However the CMA warns that current plans lack both clarity and a sense of urgency, which is something that they hope a new national initiative might bring.

Unfortunately there is the looming prospect of a general election campaign on the horizon and a resulting degree of uncertainty about which policy might end up being followed. Of course not everybody blames the government. The CEO of O-Bit Telecom, Dave Breith, puts the onus firmly on BT instead.


To be fair BT have invested £1.5bn into a deployment of FTTH /P and FTTC fibre optic based broadband services to reach 40% of the country by summer 2012. The operator has done this despite having a huge pension deficit and other financial burdens to deal with. It is no longer the monopoly that it once was, in most areas at least, and as a result the burden of faster service deployment does have to be shared by more than a single operator.