Analysis: Back on the broadband wagon

By Stephen Bruce

Posted on 3 May 2005 at 11:46

ADSL2+ might be making the headlines, but Britain isn't catching up with the leading broadband nations, reports Stephen Bruce

Everyone from telephone companies and ISPs to early adopters and broadcasters are talking up the next generation of DSL broadband services.

But how long will we have to wait for these services to arrive?

Broadband uptake has spread across Britain (nearly doubling last year and now totalling some five million connections in the UK), but bandwidth-hungry users are already impatiently waiting for the next raft of services - such as television on demand - which could be carried over high-speed ADSL2+.

These connections are already widely available in Europe, with France and Italy leading the way, but the first trials in the UK were launched only last month. This followed the January certification of the standard by the Network Interoperability Consultative Committee, the UK Web standards body.

So why are we so far behind our Continental cousins and will we ever catch up? Sweden has enjoyed 10Mb/sec connections for more than a year and a 2Mb/sec line is considered an entry-level service. Only a lucky few homes currently enjoy such 'broaderband' services in the UK.

For a start, Britain - under the government's plans for a totally connected UK - has concentrated on extending the reach of broadband rather than increasing speeds.

'All the services here are very slow compared with Scandinavia, for example,' said Ian Fogg, broadband analyst at Jupiter Research. 'The focus here has been on making broadband available everywhere, and we've been successful, but that success has to be put into context.

'We have high-profile politicians talking about ending the digital divide, which sounds great, but the problem is that's just moved the focus, so now we have a high-speed problem.

'If market forces were left to work then perhaps we would have high-speed networks already in place in cities. Urban areas have been penalised, as the rollout of broadband has been made available to everyone rather than where it's in the highest demand.'

In practical terms, BT has concentrated on increasing the distance broadband signals could travel between local telephone exchanges and customers - a distance that had previously been restricted to about 6km.

ADSL2+ works by doubling the frequency of DSL signals to 2.2MHz, which means that over short distances speeds of 24Mb/sec are possible. This brings the potential of high-definition television on demand, crystal-clear video calls and massive file transfers. But these high-speed services would require huge investment.

'We've been talking to telcos about this recently and there's a strange situation that doesn't make sense,' said a senior official at telecommunications and media watchdog Ofcom. 'From our research, customers seem really interested in the new technologies, but as far as we know there aren't any concrete plans to offer widespread next-generation services. There seems to be a massive difference between what people want and what is being offered.

'The telcos say there simply isn't a business case for the investment in the network infrastructure needed to make these,' said the official.

'They've given us indications of £10 billion upgrade requirements and they're currently unwilling to take that risk until they see the market is ready.

'What we at Ofcom have to do is make sure there's confidence in the market so that if people make the investment it will pay off - we can't put too much pressure on them to keep prices so low that they can't see a way of making those large investments pay off.'