Today’s report into broadband – published by the Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee – is an interesting read. Not only because it calls for the 50p broadband tax to be scrapped and reveals the Government hasn’t the first clue what its own 2Mbits/sec broadband pledge actually means, but because it uncovers an even deeper level of Government technical incompetence than we feared.

Take this table – credited to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – which appears on page 11 of the report and allegedly describes the capability of different internet connection speeds:

Even accounting for the fact that the table was produced in layman’s terms for politicians, some of the entries are beyond bewildering.

What on earth is “network storage and backup” doing under 256Kbits/sec, for instance? We presume they mean “online storage and backup”, in which case, you’d better put aside a month or two to back up your hard disk on a connection that slow. Not that the download speed even matters when it comes to backup, which is all about the uplink anyway.

Then we move on to 512Kbits/sec, where suddenly “tele-health” makes an appearance, whatever that may be. And apparently 512Kbits/sec connections offer faster internet browsing than 256Kbits/sec – who’d have thunk it?

By the time we get to the heady heights of 1Mbit/sec and “fast internet browsing”, specific applications start getting a mention such as the BBC iPlayer and, curiously, Second Life. I don’t know how much time they spend playing Second Life in Whitehall, but even on my home 3Mbits/sec connection it takes ages for the scenery to draw in.

You’ll also notice that “near-VHS  PC conference call” makes an appearance under 1Mbits/sec, which is a quite brilliant use of analogue terminology applied to digital technology. It’s only a shame we’ll need to wait for 2Mbits/sec connections before we can kick off our shoes and enjoy “long-form video”, specifically in the MPEG-4 format.

Video conferencing via TV also arrives at 2Mbits/sec, suggesting that your TV somehow requires more bandwidth than your PC. Presumably they mean bigger screens, but who knows?

With technical advice of this calibre, is it any wonder Government IT projects are in such a mess?