BSG comment

Building on Conservative Party Leader David Cameron’s commitment to broadband earlier in the week, last Friday Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt set out the Conservative Party’s views on next generation broadband.

The main commitment in Hunt’s speech was to re-iterate Cameron’s commitment to bring next-generation broadband to the majority of the population within five years, and to provide near-universal coverage as soon as possible after that.

Hunt went on to say that deployment should be market-led, and that the role of the public sector was as a facilitator of investment. In conjunction with their broadband policy, the Conservatives will conduct a review of the creative industries, details of which will be released soon.

The full speech is available here.

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG

It may have been the holiday season, but broadband was rarely off the news cycle in one form or another, so here’s a round-up of some of the most interesting stories from the Christmas period.

Most interestingly, David Cameron yesterday committed the Conservatives to fibre optic ‘high speed broadband’ for the majority of the population within five years, and, ‘to as near as possible, universal coverage within ten years’. A bold promise, although we are still waiting to see the detail of this policy. This followed Gordon Brown suggesting in an Observer interview that high-speed broadband could play a similar role to investment in infrastructure during previous recessions. Prior to this, also in the Observer, Professor Christopher Bishop, chief scientist at Microsoft Research Cambridge had suggested that the government could ‘do no better than rewire the nation with fibre optics’ if it was looking for an infrastructure project to stimulate the economy.

At the same time, we were given an indication of what could be included in Stephen Carter’s Digital Britain report. In an article in The Times, a universal broadband service of 2Mbps was suggested, alongside a comprehensive reform of the existing universal service obligations. Carter’s interim report is due to be published this month, with the full report later this year.

Gordon Brown wasn’t the only global leader to reference broadband over Christmas. President-elect Barack Obama spoke of his plan to provide a stimulus to the US digital economy, including improving broadband and increasing take-up. He described the US performance on broadband as ‘unacceptable’.

Staying in the States, the Recording Industry Association of America has decided to abandon its strategy of suing individual downloaders of copyright material. Instead it will adopt a more constructive approach, working with ISPs to identify those who upload copyright material in a move similar to the approach being taken in the UK.

Coming back to the UK, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham made headlines with an interview in the Telegraph in which he suggested that cinema-style age ratings could be applied to the Internet, and said he wanted to work with Obama’s administration to develop international deceny rules for English-language websites. This has caused an interesting debate to occur, with many comment boards filling up in response, and the majority not in favour.

Finally, fulfilling one of the recommendations of the Caio Review, the Valuation Office Agency set out how it will rate fibre in next generation broadband deployments. This is a timely clarification by the VOA, and although containing few surprises, helps to remove some of the uncertainty facing potential investors in NGA.

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG

Virgin Media today announced that they are offering a 50Mbps service to 5m homes on their network, with plans to offer the service to their whole network of 12m homes by Summer of 2009.

The BSG has issued a statement welcoming this announcement. The next generation broadband debate has now moved from the realms of theory to reality. How this service impacts on the market will be a key indicator of the likely deployment of next generation broadband more widely in the UK.

Focus will now be on the success and take-up of this service, and the responses of other market players.

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG

BSG welcomes Virgin Media’s announcement of its new 50Mbps service, currently available to 5m homes on the Virgin network. This is the first major commercial rollout of next generation broadband, and represents a significant step in the development of the UK’s knowledge economy infrastructure.

Commenting, Antony Walker, CEO of the BSG said, “This is a very significant development in the context of next generation broadband deployment in the UK. Over the last two years the debate has moved on significantly, and this last year has seen intentions to deploy expressed by both Virgin Media and BT.

“With the launch of this service, Virgin have moved the debate on again. The impact this service has on the market will tell us a lot about how next generation broadband will develop in the UK.???

To celebrate the iPlayer’s first anniversary since its soft launch, the BBC’s Internet blog has been blogging on a variety of iPlayer issues for iPlayer Day.

The blog has produced some interesting discussions, particularly their developments for delivery on multiple platforms, such as games consoles and mobiles as well as over broadband and cable networks. It was interesting to note that views over Virgin Media’s cable service accounted for a third of all iPlayer programmes viewed in September.

iPlayer has had a successful first year, with over 180m programmes watched. It has not been without controversy, however: data from one ISP suggested that iPlayer was responsible for 5% of all traffic on their network, and the BBC came under increasing pressure for its impact on ISP and consumer costs.

The debate about the impact of iPlayer on the network seems to have calmed down (or perhaps it is just simmering under?). Either way, it is here to stay, and perhaps its continued popularity will catalyse further debates that need to be held across the value chain.

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG

Much has been made of Barack Obama’s successful use of the Internet in organising and coordinating his campaign, and in engaging (and soliciting donations from) his supporters, with many refering to him as the first candidate to successfully do this.

This is true, but it is worth remembering that he and John McCain were the first candidates with this opportunity. Currently, the US has 64% household penetration of broadband, which is sufficient critical mass for an organisation like Obama’s to flourish. However, in previous election years the same statistic was at 25% (at the start of 2004) and 0.25% (at the start of 2000).

Broadband growth has been exceptional, in the vast majority of markets. Growth has generally been faster than the mobile phone experienced, the spread of PC usage in the home, or even the take-up of tv. That broadband has been one of the fast growing trends in recent memory is worth remembering if the pace of the debate around many of the issues today feels slow – keeping up with such a fast-moving trend provides many challenges.

Obama made excellent use of broadband during the election. However, his extensive network may now be causing his transition team some problems. Apparently 290,000 applications have been received through his change.gov website for the 8,000 posts available, with the number of applications expected to rise to 1m by January.

By comparison in 2000, George W. Bush received just 44,000 applications. And this doesn’t include the bombardment of Obama staffers’ email accounts or social networking profiles. Information overload, perhaps? Sounds like a familiar debate…

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG

News came through today that the Pakistan Telecoms Authority is to take the lead in a newly formed Broadband Stakeholder Group in Pakistan. The group have identified a range of issues that, on the surface, appear very similar to those that the BSG were tasked with addressing back in 2001.

Pakistan are not alone in examining the BSG model. There is already a Broadband Stakeholders Group in the Lebanon (which has produced a Broadband Manifesto), and other countries such as Chile have shown an interest in the concept.

For me, these developments highlight two things. First is the acceptance of the central role and importance of widespread coverage and take-up of broadband for the economic and social wellbeing of a country and its citizens. Markets across the globe are developing at different speeds, starting from very different positions and at different times. However, the issues they are facing are similar and the conclusions reached in response are broadly aligned – certainly no-one has said that broadband is not important.

The second point is that many of these issues require a collaborative effort to be addressed. They are too big to be solely the responsibility of a competitive industry, or a government department, or a regulator. Lebanon, Pakistan and others are finding this to be true of first generation broadband; in our experience, so it is true of next generation broadband.

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG

As someone who spends a lot of his time discussing the importance and value of broadband, in all of its forms, to the economy and wider society I’m struck by how few manage to articulate a worthy vision for the impact of broadband.

A recent example of this was Ofcom’s timid attempt at a vision in its recent superfast broadband consultation (see section four). The Caio review made a good effort with broadband as an ‘essential digital utility’, but still didn’t quite capture it to my mind.

So it was pleasing to read, in an article in the Guardian early last week, that Stephen Carter is able to set out a vision superior to most efforts, referring to broadband as ‘commercially, socially, culturally, economically and politically transforming’.

This is about as good as I have heard, and hopefully bodes well for the future of Digital Britain.

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG