Some of you might know that yesterday the UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) held a conference.
But what some of you might not know is that during the event, the majority of internet service providers voiced their doubts about the UK leading Europe in terms of superfast broadband.
As a quick reminder, the UK Government’s BDUK office has invested £530m (which will potentially grow to £830m by 2017) to get 90 per cent of residents of each county connected to superfast broadband, in other words speeds of 24Mbps or hopefully more.
The remaining 10 per cent would be left with basic speeds of 2Mbps, which according to the government apparently is better than nothing.
As a separate strategy, the European Commission’s Digital Agenda hopes to get absolutely everyone connected (that’s 100 per cent) to at least basic speeds by 2013, to later on pump up the services to 30Mbps by 2020, half of which would be prospective 100Mbps clients.
Do the math, if you are comparing the two plans.
It has also been mentioned that some EU countries already have superfast fibre speeds at affordable prices nailed, Sweden or Romania for instance.
Trefor Davies, Co-founder and CTO of Timico, commented:
“Only one person, from BT, put their hands up (and there were at least 5 BT employees in the audience). Turning the question around as a check I asked who thought that the UK would not have the best network by 2015. Most hands went up.”
He also added that politicians should not sugarcoat the broadband situation, so to speak, by saying that “the political rhetoric needs to change to reflect this”.
