Digital Britain

(By Richard Holway 8.00am 17th June 09) There are acres of news reports today on Digital Britain white paper presented yesterday by Lord Carter. A decent summary of the main points in the FT.

Although any improvement in broadband speed and availability is to be welcome, I still feel that this is “too little, too late”. The target is for every house in Britain to be able to access the internet at a minimum of 2mbps by 2012. But that’s 3 years away and 2mbps is too slow to use many of the services available even today – let alone the bandwidth hungry services that are coming (like HD TV) and the increased multitasking in households.

Everyone thinks that it is only rural areas that are deprived. But our broadband service here in Farnham is pretty awful too. After 5.00pm, when the neighbours kids come home, I get little more than 500kbsp; so iPlayer is out in the evenings.

We really do need to be bolder if the UK is benefit from the digital revolution. I increasingly feel that one area where the UK really has a global edge is in the ‘creative industries’. Many of these start ‘at home’. But without fast broadband, many will be stillborn.