UK needs high fibre now

A new report recommends that the UK upgrades its bandwidths

A new report released today by the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) called Pipe Dreams? Prospects for next generation broadband deployment in the UK paints a worrying picture for the future global competitiveness of the UK.

The BSG argues that if the UK was to lag significantly behind its international competitors in bandwidths available to citizens and consumers, then “the pace of innovation in the economy could slip behind that of those competitors”.

To address this “lag” the BSG says categorically that moves to the next generation of connectivity “will require the deployment of optical fibre deeper into the local access network, either to the street cabinet or directly to the customer premises”.

A recent report, Very High Speed Broadband: A Case for Intervention, produced by Enders Analysis in January estimated the capital cost of providing fibre to 90 percent of UK households to be €14bn.

The BSG gives nine recommendations to address the situation in the UK, ranging from monitoring the demand for bandwidth and benchmarking UK comms infrastructure with those of our competitors, to identifying models for efficient public sector intervention.