The Broadband Stakeholders
Group is worried that the government will not support
investment to roll out a 2mbps universal broadband service
broadband to rural areas.
The supplier-led association welcomed with reservations the
government's commitment announced in the Budget.
But it said it was concerned that the announcements "do not yet
provide grounds for confidence that such services will be made
available beyond urban areas".
The BSG said earlier it would cost
close to £30bn to provide optical fibre to every house in
Britain (FTTH), but just over £5bn if the fibre went to the street
connection cabinet (FTTC). Most of this would go on civil
engineering works in rural areas, it said.
Cities and towns are already well-served. The
Information Commissioner's
Office reported that most broadband subscribers received an
average download speed of more than 4mbps, but the adoption rate,
15.6 million consumer connections, is relatively low at 26%.
BT has already announced
plans to spend £1.5bn to provide access to 40mbps connections
to some 10 million homes, and Virgin Media is nearing the end of
its roll-out of
50mbps access to 12 million homes. Virgin Media CEO Neil
Berkett told the recent Digital Britain summit that his network
could be pushed to 200mbps.
These projects cover most urban homes. The government's proposed
universal service obligation would bring country-dwellers online,
but at 2mbps.
The government said it would also consider wireless access,
which would provide high speed mobile broadband. Most of the five
mobile operators are working on plans to install 100mbps networks
based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology from next year.
They are also asking for the government to release frequencies
in the 800Mhz range while the government is negotiating for
Vodafone and O2 to give up some of their 900MHz frequencies.
These changes to spectrum ownership are likely to prove vital to
getting high speed broadband to country area at an affordable
price.