CIOs voice concern over 'half-hearted' Digital Britain proposals

Digital Britain's universal service commitment of 2Mbit/s not good for UK competitiveness

Lord Carter’s final Digital Britain report will have hugely significant implications for UK IT leaders when it finally sees the light of day some time shortly before the parliamentary recess on 21 July.

Lord Carter has confirmed the objectives he and the Department for Business, Enterprise and regulatory Reform (BERR) are aiming for, include the "upgrading and modernising our digital networks – wired, wireless and broadcast – so that Britain has an infrastructure that enables it to remain globally competitive in the digital world."

A universal service commitment (USC) will be the cornerstone of that modernisation plan, and the Carter's interim report suggests that will entail a guarantee that the UK's network infrastructure will provide up to 2Mbits/s connectivity throughout the country by 2012.

But would that commitment, even if introduced as a minimum standard, benefit IT chiefs?

Hardly, argues Rob Bamforth principal analyst at IT advisory group Quocirca. "2Mbit/s is such a low service commitment. If you're a business to consumer CIO or one whose employees are working from home, you'd have difficulty rolling out IP telephony, virtual private networks (VPN), and other back-office content access," he says.

The problem would be even more pronounced when CIOs want to give employees rich media access, such as video conferencing for example to try and save money on travel, says Bamforth. If more than one member of a family is working from home, lack of bandwidth becomes even more concerning.

"As soon as you start to move into rich media, like video, you'll soon start to struggle," says Bamforth.

Corporate IT Forum director of research Ollie Ross agrees. "While the Government must be commended for recognising that ubiquitous broadband access is now an essential requirement for living and working in the UK, the current proposed broadband speed of 2Mbit/s feels very half hearted – it’s a starting point but mustn’t be a target," she says.

Ross argues that 2Mbit/s would not support the way in which businesses or consumers are using broadband today, "let alone how they may want to use the internet in the future,"

"Our members are concerned that this target could make UK businesses less competitive – and that’s not good during a recession," she insists.

The cost control agenda is critical to CIOs in deep recessions like the one currently being experienced in the UK, says Ross. Flexible working, "is key to many cost cutting plans. Many large businesses rely on fast broadband speeds and they want to enable staff to work more flexibly and remotely," she adds.

A commitment to a paltry 2Mbit/s by 2012, sets the bar too low argues independent watchdog Consumer Focus. "It is a major concern, particularly when other European countries such as Germany and Sweden already achieve average speeds of 4.8Mbit/s and 7.4Mbit/s respectively and Finland has set a 100Mbit/s target," it said in a statement.

Nevertheless, BERR defends the proposed 2Mbit/s target. "Obviously we've had criticism, with comments like 'It's not high enough when Korea's got 50Mbit/s'. This misses the point – it's not what the highest speed should be, it's what the base level should be. It's sort of a minimum wage for broadband," argues a spokesperson for BERR.

And broadband information provider Point Topic strongly supports the 2Mbit/s target – provided the quality-of-service (QoS) is assured. QoS is a key question and also a problem with current residential broadband services, because no ISP gives business-type service level agreements (SLAs).