The high costs of building datacentres in the UK could
prevent the full roll-out ofDigital Britain's ambitions.
Construction expert Derek Webster said there are a few
"bottlenecks" in the UK that mean building
datacentres is not easy and its clients are looking elsewhere
in the EU instead.
While most home broadband users will be fine to use offshore
datacentres, it is businesses and people working from home who may
need the fastest possible broadband, and who could lose out. "When
it comes to, say, the financial services industry, a delay in
movement of information or money of a millisecond can cost tens of
millions of dollars, so the demand is to keep those servers close
by," Webster said.
He added that small and medium-sized businesses need as
effective an infrastructure as possible to ensure the UK maintains
its competitive edge.
Prohibitive building costs
Expensive electricity and land, slow planning regulations and a
patchy fibre infrastructure outside London make the UK a difficult
place to build in, despite the fact that many companies are keen to
base their datacentres here.
Webster said, "[One issue] is the lack of fibre for domestic and
SME broadband and data transmission. On this front, the UK is a
generation behind other parts of the world.
"Digital Britain may end up with its major organs being based in
France, Germany, Sweden or Switzerland because of power cost and
availability."
2MB too slow
The Digital Britain ambition is to provide 2MB broadband to
every home in Britain, but Webster says this may not be enough in
the not-too-distant future.
"It is actually very slow. If you want to watch high-definition,
pay-per-view TV, you would need a minimum of 8MB."
He added that the SME sector needs the support of an efficient
infrastructure. "The backbone of the UK economy is SMEs. They are
the next Microsoft. If we don't improve the service, we are just
going to be uncompetitive."
Planning issues
Another problem revolves around planning laws. There are no
clear guidelines for local authorities when assessing a datacentre
application, and this can lead to "gross misunderstandings" of the
importance of datacentres.
Webster suggested the government provide low-duty electricity to
datacentres to lower the cost of running them.