UK Government Announce Superfast Broadband Scheme

The government has today announced plans to provide every UK community with access to super fast broadband by 2015.

The new broadband strategy known as ‘Britain’s Superfast Broadband Future’ aims to create a Digital Hub in every community in the UK, which the government hope will provide Britain with the best broadband infrastructure in Europe.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt also announced that there will be an additional £50m of funding to help push forward more pilot schemes to test and improve super-fast broadband connections, with particular emphasis on rural areas of the UK. This publicly-funded project will encompass money originally earmarked for the BBC to help fund the digital switchover, with Hunt adding that he was still keen on adding private funding to the project.

This new broadband strategy centres around the use of Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) rather than Fibre to the Home (FTTH) connections. The difference between the two being that FTTC connects homes to cabinets out on the street using copper wire offering users speeds of up to 40Mbps, however with FTTH, speeds of up to 100Mbps can be achieved through the fibre optic cables that run staright into homes.

“A superfast network will be the foundation for a new economic dynamism, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and adding billions to our GDP,” Hunt said in a statement. “But it is not just about the economy, around the world there are countless examples of superfast broadband helping to build a fairer and more prosperous society, and to transform the relationship between government and citizens.”

Part of the Broadband Strategy also involves improving mobile broadband speeds and coverage across the UK revealing that a spectrum auction of 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum will be announced in 2011.

The UK Broadband Strategy

Making BT’s existing infrastructure of cable ducts and telegraph poles available to rival operators (Ofcom to set rates for this in January 2011).

• Making BT’s existing infrastructure of cable ducts and telegraph poles available to rival operators (Ofcom to set rates for this in January 2011).
• No change to the controversial Fibre Tax beyond August 2010′s new guidance.
• A ‘Digital Hub’ (i.e. Digital Village Pump) in every remote and rural community (areas that would not benefit from private sector investment). These will connect, via fibre optic cable, to the communities nearest telephone exchange and help to bring faster services than would ordinarily be available.
• Improving Mobile Broadband (3G/4G) speeds and coverage through various regulatory changes and radio spectrum auctions. This includes making 800MHz (old analogue TV signals) and 2.6GHz available for use by future mobile data solutions ( 4G / LTE ). It will also allow existing 900MHz and 1800MHz (2G voice spectrum) to be used for 3G internet services.
• Benchmarking to help compare how well the UK’s broadband roll-out is doing versus Europe; speed, availability, market competition and value are likely to be key weighting factors.
• Updating the guidance for road works. This would hopefully allow network operators to dig new fibre optic cables with lower roll-out costs.
• New guidance for builders to ensure the broadband readiness of new build homes and business premises.
• Adoption of a technology neutral approach to fixed-line broadband, Satellite and wireless ( Wi-Fi etc. ) solutions (i.e. they won’t specifically favour one over the other).
• Second batch of super-fast pilots, chosen from the first April 2011 bids/proposals (funding of £50m allocated from the BDUK budget).

A recent survey by Ofcom revealed that just 0.2% of UK homes have a super-fast broadband connection, compared to 12% in Sweden and 34% in Japan.