Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has promised high speed broadband for all in a wide ranging speech which outlines how the Internet can be better used to benefit society.
As well as increasing provision of services suitable for the current age, Corbyn wants the Internet to be used as a democratising platform, talking of a ‘Digital Citizens Passport’, a one-stop ID for accessing health, welfare and education services online, apparently expanding the scope of the existing Universal Credit Pathfinder scheme.
It’s currently unclear how Corbyn’s plans differ from the current proposals to update the Universal Service Obligation - which would see everyone able to demand a basic 10Mbps service - or if it would expand on gains made by the Broadband Deliver for the UK (BDUK) schemes, which have brought superfast services, defined as anything delivering 25Mbps or over - to 90 per cent of UK addresses.
The BDUK project aims to increase superfast coverage to at least 95 per cent by the end of 2017 and 98 per cent by the end of 2018.
Defining ‘superfast’ under such terms has meant that an address can count as being ‘passed’ (in industry parlance), even if they get just above that threshold. Due to the technical limitations of Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC), some passed homes closer to cabinets will be able to get speeds of around 60-70Mbps whereas others will get something closer to 30Mbps.
In some locations, there’s no difference between old-school ADSL and FTTC at all, hence why BT is trialling long range VDSL in places like North Tolsta.
Future proof Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) lines do not suffer from this technical limitation and can deliver download and upload speeds in excess of 1Gbps (or 1,024Mbps).
Due to the costs involved, BT and others have been reluctant to roll FTTP out on a large scale. BT’s aiming to deliver FTTP to 2 million properties by 2020, while Virgin Media’s gunning for half that number by 2019.
Corbyn was cagey on whether or not he would nationalise BT’s network, or force it to sell off Openreach, as rivals Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone are calling for under the Fix Britain’s Internet banner. There was no mention of FTTP, or whether his plans amount to little more than tweaks of existing Tory policy.
You can read the Digital Democracy plan in full here.
Update: Johnny Robinson, Europasat’s chief marketing office has released the following statement:
"There’s a wealth of evidence from across the world to support the idea that high speed broadband is a crucial enabler and there’s been a broad political consensus on this point for some years in the UK. Successive governments have promised large sums and a panoply of schemes which have achieved mixed results, but with initiatives such as the Better Broadband Scheme in England and Scotland and the Access Broadband Cymru scheme in Wales, we are finally starting to see inroads being made. The important point is that whoever is in power actually delivers on the rhetoric, not just in terms of investment but also in terms of simplicity of take-up of solutions such as satellite broadband or wireless.
"We welcome any initiative that allows for better connectivity in poorly served areas. Jeremy Corbyn is right to point out that it is crucial for business and consumers in rural areas in order to access markets and services where they are currently at a significant disadvantage, and that this will redress geographical imbalances.
“However, this is something we deliver on every day with Europasat's high speed satellite broadband technology which is deployable anywhere in the UK, right now and is often subsidised by existing schemes, meaning that the initial set up is free. With speeds of 30Mbps, it is actually faster than the UK average broadband speed.”
“Jeremy Corbyn” by Garry Knight is licensed under CC BY 2.0