Broadband for All: the Future of a Digital Britain

December 3, 2009 by DSL and Broadband Tips  
Filed under Broadband, Wireless & High Speed

What is broadband for all?

Each UK home will get to connect to broadband, mobile or fixed, by 2012 in a proposal made by Communications minister Lord Stephen Carter. Lord Carter wants to ensure the, amongst others, 1.75 million rural homes which at the moment don’t have access to broadband, will do in the next three years.

Aiming to maximise use of broadband and levels of service, broadband access is a main element to MP Lord Carter’s 22 proposals listed in the Digital Britain report, which focuses on the whole of the media industry in the UK.

How will broadband for all work?

The plan states that broadband lines will have a line speed of at least 2 Mbps, which is speedy enough to download a film overnight.

Mobile broadband connections are accessed through a dongle, provided by mobile phone companies, while fixed phone lines are installed within a house.  Fixed line broadband can be accessed either through a modem attached to your laptop, or a wirelessly within the home.   

Pros of broadband for all

It’s guaranteed that all UK citizens will be able to use the internet despite their social situation, allowing everyone an equal attempt to access a wide range of information available on the internet.

Broadband for all is looking to make broadband systems more efficient for new and current users, transforming it into a five-star system in the future.    

A new national minimum will be implemented for broadband connection speeds. Broadband connection speeds have been a major complaint for mobile broadband consumers in the past year, after finding that patchy coverage and slow downloads opposed what mobile phone providers led them to believe as a speedy system through claims of speeds up to 7Mbps.

It will be a legal requirement for phone companies to create and pay for a broadband network throughout the country, however public cash might be involved.

Cons of broadband for all

The 2012 deadline set by Lord Carter might be seen as too short a period to implement a broadband system around the whole country into place. George W. Bush’s 2004 statement that affordable broadband for citizens residing in America would be available in 2007, has now been taken on by Barack Obama – with no happenings two years after the original deadline.

Some critics are unsure of the minimum broadband connection speed of 2 Mbps, saying that the proposals are ‘timid’ compared to the current national average connection speed of 3.6 Mbps. 

Phone company BT’s recently reported profit dip could be hard for the broadband for all proposal to be implemented, after the amount of building a broadband network, which BT and other telecoms would be legally required to do, is estimated at £3.5 billion.    



Thanks to Samantha French for contributing this article to our DSL blog:

Samantha French has been a freelance journalist for over a decade. She works with a range of clients to produce copy for internet, magazines and television. She is also a full time writer for broadband comparison website Compare Broadband UK



Free DSL Internet Service

DSL and Broadband Tips

Comments

Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!





Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes