Posted: 12th Oct, 2011 By: MarkJ


Senior officials from
Arqiva, a communications infrastructure and media services company, and Satellite ISP Avanti have heavily criticised the UK and Welsh government approaches to rolling out a new generation of superfast broadband (24Mbps+) services. In particular Arqiva felt that the
minimum download speed target of 2Mbps, which the government wants 100% of people to have, was a "
reasonable level of service".
The governments Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office is currently spending its budget of
£530m to help 90% of the UK come within reach of a superfast service by 2015. The
Digital Wales Strategy, which recently won
£56.9 Million of that funding, also envisages the deployment of 30Mbp+ capable services to 100% of the country's businesses by the middle of 2016 and households by 2020. But there's a problem.
David Williams, CEO of Avanti, warned (Wales Online):"When private companies are expecting that Government will at some point in the future subsidise installations, those private companies don’t invest. So if I knew there was going to be no Government subsidy at all in Wales for the next 10 years I and my service providers would invest to make sure that everybody in Wales got a (two megabits per second) service at the lowest possible price.
So Government should either make a decision and spend some money or make a decision to not spend money but do it quickly."
Williams makes an interesting and oft-repeated point about the impact of governments helping to subsidise such deployments, although many more feel that it may be the only way to help rural locations where the private sector has traditionally failed.
Arqiva's Head of Public Policy & Regulatory Affairs, Julian McGougan, added:
"We have consumers standing outside a Ferrari garage with their noses pressed against the window and both Governments are saying, ‘You’ll have one of those soon.’ The problem is, some of those consumers are in line to get a Ford Focus.
There is a real worry that when the pot runs dry some of those people who were in line to get a Ford Focus won’t get one because the money won’t be there.
We know some people are not going to get super-fast. It would just be utterly unpractical to deliver to them and the funds aren’t available so what we need to do is address that market."
We don't agree with Arqiva that 2Mbps constitutes a "
reasonable level of service". Anybody who shares their connectivity (i.e. family homes, businesses etc.) knows that such performance already struggles to handle the desires of even one individual and future demand is only going to grow.
As usual the primary problem isn't so much the money as how it's spent. The above firms are naturally "
tainted by commercial interests", said the Welsh Government.
Meanwhile it remains unclear how the money will actually be used. Most councils have yet to put out a tender and the wider industry is continuing to wrangle over access to cable ducts and spectrum allocations. At this rate the only money being spent is on wasted time.