The Government is agonising over how it will publish the grim
findings from its Broadband Stakeholders Group, set up earlier this
year.
The group finds that the UK is currently 10th out of the 11 main
economies in broadband adoption. Worse, even if recommendations to
improve this position are followed we will still only reach 7th
place by 2005.
That is a major setback to the UK's avowed aim of being world's
best place to do e-business by that date.
BT vehemently denies that it has dragged its feet on broadband
introduction. It argues that 70% of small businesses are within
500m of a fibre connection; that the demand from operators for an
unbundled local loop has evaporated since it became reality this
year; and that adoption is an issue of content as much as of
infrastructure.
Businesses do not worry about such detail. They have seen their
German counterparts routinely using ISDN for the past 10 years, and
enjoy nationwide DSL availability. To them, 500m is a long way.
Germany will have one million DSL subscribers this year, rising to
2.6 million by the end of 2002. By 2005 Germany, with 9 million DSL
subscribers, expects to have 50% of global DSL subscriptions.
Germany has truly benefited from its local loop unbundling back in
1998. The figures are from the CBI's German equivalent, the BDI,
presented at a recent CBI meeting in London.
In truth, broadband is still a technology looking for applications.
Being locked into narrowband for so long has discouraged any
serious content developer. That is why less than 1% of pages
accessed via broadband in the UK today are true broadband. Most are
narrowband applications used over broadband.
At the CBI meeting, John Ashworth, who probably did more than
anyone to try to save the indigenous UK IT industry as it slid down
the pan in the 1980s, pointed to genetic engineering and defence
becoming the real drivers for broadband content development.
Ashworth, a former biologist, said comparisons of complex anthrax
strains cannot be made quickly without broadband capacity.
However, even this ill wind may not help raise the UK in the
rankings.