UK's super-fast broadband promise debunked as too little too late

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's plan to deliver super-fast broadband by 2020 to the UK has been debunked as a joke.

'' 'Farcical', and could put Britain's competitiveness in the global economy into serious jeopardy,'' says Mark Seemann, product strategy and development director for leading cloud computing company, Outsourcery, which services over 10,000 SMEs in the UK.

According to Seeman, ''With more and more of Britain's communications depending upon access to high speed internet connections, Britain has already become a two-speed economy with SMEs seriously disadvantaged by the poor broadband infrastructure, leaving it unable to cope with new technologies, which require greater bandwidths to support the growing demand for real-time, exchange of information.''

Seemann continues, ''2020 is too late and if the issues are not addressed now, UK plc will fall far behind its American, European and Asian rivals. Labour needs to define what 'fast broadband' means. If the broadband is not fibre-based then its future is limited to about 100MB making it obsolete almost immediately. It is projected that broadband requirements would be upwards of 1GB, so let's just pay for the infrastructure once only and get it right now!''

With remote working becoming an integral part of daily business life, the government needs to look carefully at the cost to the economy of not providing blanket digital cover.

''The 50p per month levy-based system should not be limited to fixed line connections only, but should include access to mobile broadband (eg trains, tubes and buses), said Seemann. ''At present accessibility to broadband on trains is poor and patchy, leading to a loss of productivity when traveling. Not only are the government's plans too little too late, but they do not go far enough to address the issues facing the UK's business in the 21st century.

We need to unlock the business and employment potential that high speed internet access offers.''