Comms managers: UK businesses need fibre

Britain's business efficiency is being threatened by relatively slow broadband speeds, according to a report by the Communications Management Association.

The Communications Management Association's (CMA's) Next Generation Access report, issued on Thursday, claims companies' e-commerce operations will suffer unless broadband speeds are increased. Although the backbone of the UK's broadband infrastructure is being upgraded to fibre, the current impasse over the provision of fibre access — or next-generation access (NGA) — to homes and businesses is preventing such speeds from becoming widely available.

More than a third of the businesses surveyed by the CMA said they need speeds of 100Mbps if they are to address the demand for next-generation services that the CMA anticipates will arise within the next two years. Around a third also said they "currently do not receive satisfactory access to internet technology, such as infrastructure, services and applications", the CMA said in a statement.

The CMA, which is part of the British Computer Society (BCS), attacked the government for failing to follow through on its promises regarding NGA.

"The gap between government rhetoric and formulation of policy appears to be as wide as ever," said David Harrington, the CMA's director of regulatory affairs. "Back in April last year, we warned there was a limited window of opportunity over the next 12-24 months to develop and implement a concerted and innovative approach to regulation and policy-making that would lead to a market-led transition to next-generation broadband. Fourteen months on, there is little sign of either a concerted or innovative approach to regulation and policy-making, which the government acknowledged as recently as last September as being necessary."

The CMA's report coincided with a speech given to Intellect, the UK's IT industry body, by Ofcom chief Ed Richards. Speaking on the subject of NGA investment, Richards seemed to imply the regulator would not put severe price limitations on those companies, such as BT, who are likely to invest in NGA and sell those services onto other providers.

"Ofcom favours a regulatory environment for the next generation of networks and access that both allows and encourages operators to make risky investments, to innovate for the benefit of consumers and, if the risks pay off, for the benefit of their shareholders too," said Richards. "We are very clear that, if operators are going to make investments in new infrastructure, investment that is inherently more risky than developing the existing infrastructure, then they need to know that the regulatory framework will allow them to make and keep a rate of return that is commensurate with the risks they are taking."

Many European countries have already deployed fibre to the home (FTTH), and a European body that deals with NGA issued a report on Friday in which it said such improvements in broadband speeds clearly resulted in more usage. The FTTH Council Europe said its report confirmed Nielsen's Law, which says the bandwidth available to a high-end user grows at 50 percent every year, and also showed "high-end" broadband usage per home was growing at 20 percent per annum.

Last year, BT Openreach said it was unsure there was demand for next-generation access.