Britain’s broadband leaders: arrogant and ambitionless

Friday, November 27th, 2009

How is Britain going to get the next-generation broadband network it desperately needs to compete in the modern world? That was the question posed to a panel of more than a dozen industry leaders and experts at the latest Westminster eForum, but convincing answers were desperately thin on the ground.

Instead of courage, creativity and innovation, the mood coming from Britain’s broadband leaders was complacency, resignation and a weary confession that we’re “still going round the same issues time and time again”.

The half of the country that’s connected to fibre provided by Virgin Media, BT or any number of local projects can almost certainly look forward to download speeds of 40Mbits/sec plus in the next few years. But what about the other half – the half living outside of the big cities that are already struggling on sub-standard connections?

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