The United Kingdom is falling behind many European companies in the provision of faster broadband speeds according to the Institute of Directors(IoD). Ofcom the communications watchdog agrees, they have said there is a digital divide between those with the latest technologies and those without.
Ofcom also said that British Telecom (BT) must open up its cable network and allow competition to improve Internet connections. Ofcom goes so far as to say that decent, affordable broadband should be a universal right. BT rival companies such as Sky, Vodafone and TalkTalk, who use the BT infrastructure to provide their own internet services, claim that BT has underinvested in Openreach and this is the major cause of slow speeds and service interruptions.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has fought back and recently told the BBC that “almost nine out of ten UK properties has access to super fast speeds and 95% of the U.K. Will be reached by 2017.” The IoD, however, claims the the government’s view of high speed is at best ‘mediocre’ and are calling for plans that raise the target speed to 1000 times faster. The current target is 10 gigabits per second (Gbps).
With a growing workforce either setting up businesses from home or becoming home-based workers, the need for ultrafast communications has never been so great. “Now is the time to set bold new targets for genuinely world-beating broadband.” Said Dan Lewis, senior advisor on Infrastructure Policy at the IoD.
In the Q3 2015 State of the Internet report published by Akamai, the United Kingdom was placed 9th on a list of 23 European companies with an average connection speed of 13 Megabits per second (Mbps). Sweden was at the top of the list with average speeds of 17.4 Mbps. This is a far cry from the 10 Gbps target and wildly different to the IoD recommendations.
