Broadband Britain – from novelty to necessity

Consumer broadband got started in the UK just 10 years ago, in the dying months of the last millennium, when BT and Virgin Media’s predecessors launched their first trial services. A few hundred lucky people were able to get 256 kilobits per second. Otherwise, everyone who was accessing the internet from home in1999 was using a dial up connection, which did well to deliver 50 kilobits.

“The vision of the people who launched broadband has been pretty well fulfilled,” says Tim Johnson, Chief Analyst at Point Topic. “In just 10 years high speed internet access has gone from novelty to necessity for millions of families.”

When dial-up dominated there was a distinct stereotype of user – nerdish, living in London and spending up to 100 minutes a week online.

“Downloading a single music track would take 10 minutes and although you could just about stream a movie or watch TV on-line it wasn’t much fun,” says Johnson

Compare that to today’s user. Internet usage has become almost universal across middle Britain and over 15 million households have broadband. The average broadband Brit now spends more than 16 hours a week online and downloads can be 200 times as fast as in the last millennium.

“Bandwidth seems to be increasing in the same way as computer power,” comments Johnson. “According to Moore’s Law, computer processors double in speed every 18 months – bandwidth has been increasing even faster than that.”

“Now we’ve reached the point where losing your connection or just being in ‘slowband land’ can be incredibly frustrating. Fast internet access has changed the way we listen to music, watch TV, stay in touch with our friends, shop and plan our lives,” Johnson points out. “It has touched every corner of our lives not just everyone’s life.”

Where the UK is today

Some Governments have been slow to pick up on the potential of the internet. In South Korea the authorities made a conscious decision to back the installation of broadband throughout the country. The result is that well over 95% of households have broadband, and most have access to far higher speeds than the UK will have for years to come.

“If you live in a densely populated area in the UK, chances are you’ll have access to over 2Mbps of bandwidth. About 84% of households are in the right place to get reasonable speeds according to our analysis,” says Johnson

“The picture varies a lot across the country of course. We estimate over 90% of households in Swindon have broadband, and about 99% of them can get reasonable speeds. On the other hand in Teesdale, deep in the Pennines, only 25% of households have broadband. Over 40% of them are out of range to get 2Mbps – the speed that Lord Carter suggests should be the target for universal service.”

Table 1: Percentage of population by speed range

What is the future?

Lord Carter’s interim report, released in February proposed, amongst other things, a ‘Universal Service Commitment’ for broadband. The commitment would be to offer at least 2Mbps of bandwidth to virtually all homes.

“Some people say this is too little too late, but we believe that investing to deliver 2Mbps could provide the platform for much higher-speed broadband services in areas where it wouldn’t otherwise happen for many years,” says Johnson.

The main way to provide 2 megabits in slowband areas will be to invest in bringing fibre to BT’s street cabinets, he says. FTTC (for fibre-to-the-cabinet) is the key next-generation access technology which will support download speeds of 40Mbps or more.

So the apparently cautious requirement for 2Mbps will help to provide financial support and a market driver for next-generation access.

“Under these conditions we expect the combination of cable and fibre connections to dominate in the future. If the USC and other announced investment plans are carried forward there will be over 1 million fibre lines in the UK by 2012,” says Johnson.

Looking further ahead, Point Topic forecasts that over 90% of UK homes could have broadband access in 10 years time, almost all with speeds of over 32Mbps.

“But to achieve this there’s got to be some focused and vigorous action by both government and industry,” Johnson believes. “There needs to be a strong commitment to universal service, and serious investment in getting no-net homes online. It might seem a big step today, but I think that it’s one of the best things we could do to restructure our economy as we emerge from the financial crisis.”

***END***

For more information please contact:

Point Topic: Oliver Johnson

Email: oliver {at} point-topic(.)com

Tel. +44 (0) 20 3301 3303

About Point Topic

http://www.point-topic.com