Future Thinking - Visions for Broadband Britain in 2010

Some contributors address the issue from a micro-perspective, looking at how new applications such as voice and video over IP will move to mass market; how users and service providers will react to emerging issues such as rights and security; how broadband will revolutionise the learning experience for future generations of children, and how particular technologies will develop and converge.

Others have taken a macro approach, looking at how trade and capital flows around the world will be affected by broadband and the key issues that will differentiate the winners and losers in the emerging global knowledge economy.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there is a divide between optimists and pessimists. Some think that next generation broadband services will be universally available and exploited in the UK by 2010 and that the technology will become increasingly invisible as its use becomes embedded in everyday life. Meanwhile, others warn that digital divides will remain in availability, take-up and exploitation.

And it seems that defining broadband will be as contentious in the future as it is today. Some envisage next generation broadband as being tens of megabits, symmetrical and un-contended, whilst others see the benchmark as 2 Mbps or above.

But there are also strong common threads and themes:

• that ‘broadband’, however you define it, matters to the future health and well-being of our economy and society;
• that increased innovation and productivity will result from the exploitation of broadband enabled ICT, content, services and applications;
• that broadband can be a catalyst for the transformation of public services; that competition and choice will be key drivers in this emerging market;
• that mobility will be a key attribute of the broadband future;
• that boundaries between devices and services and applications will become increasingly blurred; that the broadband value chain will become more complex and more international;
• that rights to both information, intellectual property and personal privacy will continue to be challenged and evolve;
• that broadband environments must be safe environments for our children and our society as a whole;
• that the future is in the hands of no single organisation, and
• that the Stakeholders will need to work in partnership to deliver the future.