Broadband: not super or fast or equal
Jinfo Blog

7th April 2010

By Joanna Ptolomey

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There has already been plenty of comment from LiveWire editors on digital economies and their associated Bills – (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28361) and (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28208) and (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28003). But we seem to be nearing crunch point now…..to make digital economies work we need super-fast broadband. In the UK and the US there has been quite separate ‘broadband bun fights’ going on this week. Scene 1: In the UK on Tuesday 6th April the date for the general election is announced as 6th May 2010. Parliament will now be dissolved on the 12th May 2010. Why is this important? Because we are now in ‘wash-up’ mode, where outstanding bills are rushed through before Parliament is dissolved. Great for legislation that is not too objectionable. But what is the pipeline and has been debated fiercely recently - the UK Digital Economy Bill. Already controversial it demands and requires more time to ‘get it right’. In order to get the UK legislation through, a levy to fund broadband rollout via an accompanying Finance Bill has now been scrapped. This £6 per year tax on fixed-line phones could have raised up to £170million. This money would be aimed at areas of the country where commercial vendors are finding it too expensive to roll out broadband services. How are we going to get equality of access now? Scene 2: Across the other side of the pond, the US broadband plan is discovering the concept of ‘net neutrality’. The New York Times (http://digbig.com/5bbjrh) reports that regulators may have ‘limited power over Web traffic under current law’ – citing a court ruling after the company Comcast asserted that they had the right to slow cable customers’ access to a file sharing service called BitTorrent. This means that Internet service companies can block or slow specific sites or charge sites to deliver content faster. This could lead to ‘two-tiered model’ – a major blow to US government plans that all Web traffic should be treated equally. This has implications for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who released a US national broadband plan and sent it to congress just last month. The aim is to provide high speed broadband access for all US citizens by 2010. This could now be in jeopardy. Governments and business want to operate in a completely digital environment. Lets’ face it, the amount of cash a government would save by rolling out many public services digitally is phenomenal but you need the initial investment to provide the correct infrastructure. Digital inclusion is already a real problem and one of the key features is accessibility and equality for all your population. It is crunch time. We need broadband – and we need it to be super, fast and equal.

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