A band not broad enough?

Last Modified: 16 Apr 2007
By: Channel 4 News

There are warnings that Britain's broadband network could soon be obsolete. We use it so much, they say, it's just not broad enough.

Britain's broadband revolution could come juddering to a halt unless a new, faster network is urgently built. That's the warning from the Broadband Stakeholder Group, which advises the government on internet connections.

It says that a massive take up of broadband by consumers in the last 6 years has seen the UK climb up the table of developed countries boasting the most high speed connections. But the group warns all this good work could be undone, because much of our infrastructure is already becoming obsolete.

In other countries, such as China, it's commonplace to have broadband speeds up to 100 times faster than the typical UK connection.

The Chairman of the Broadband Stakeholder group Kip Meek to answer our questions.

Isn't Britain on top of the broadband world?

Britain has done very well over the last five years, since the government set targest for UK performance at the turn of the century. We have climbed up the league tables. But to get the next increment of capacity now, we have to invest in new technologies and that is likely to be a much greater investment in fibre than has happened so far.

What actually needs to be replaced?

It is the copper local loop (the physical connection from your home to a telephone hub, usually a mile or two away). There are limits on the amount of bandwidth you can achieve on copper. Most of our households are still connected to the telephone network in that last mile, the local loop, by copper.

Either we invest heavily in fibre or possibly deploy wireless technology, but both of them have very significant costs associated.

Is there a technical answer?

Compression technology has certainly improved over the last decade, so files are getting smaller. Nevertheless we are using greater and greater bandwidth. Our current projection is that the current average use 1-2 Mbs will increase to something like 10 times that.