Ofcom still out of touch on broadband

Ofcom's latest report suggesting that take up of broadband in rural areas now matches that in urban areas is astonishing. The "job done - digital divide closed" attitude again demonstrates either that it is so out of touch with what is going on , or that its expectations of the service everyone should be receiving is so low to be contemptible. This is a body supposed to be - amongst other things - representing the interested of the consumer, but signally fails on all counts.

Ofcom completely overlooks the issue of download speed. Yes, rural take-up of broadband may be reasonable, and you would expect it to be. People living in rural areas have a greater need of broadband services - internet shopping etc. BUT, most people living in rural areas are suffering from download speeds of less than 1Mb. This at a time when broadband customers from France to Korea are enjoying 100Mb speeds. For Ofcom to consider less than 1Mb downloads as an acceptable definition for what counts as "broadband" rather overlooks the fact that things have moved on somewhat in the last five years. These "rural" broadband customers do not have a service that, for example, is good enough to allow VOIP, IPTV, or anything much apart from checking emails, and surfing web 1.0. This is not 21st century broadband.

Ofcom has allowed the UK to slip so far behind in broadband infrastructure development. It should have imposed a universal service requirement on the cable operators. Its attempts to get LLU underway were laughable, whilst there is now little incentive for ISPs to get into rural areas to provide faster services. BT's 21CN programme is way behind schedule - whoopee, come 2012 rural customers can expect speeds of "up to" 8Mb. This is stone age stuff. The manic pursuit of "competition" in the market is preventing ISPs from sharing the cost of infrastructure investment to make it worth while, and instread encouraging cherry picking of densely populated areas.

Broadband is now a commoditised utility, and service standards need to be applied universally. How would we react if our electricity was delivered to similar standards? "I'm sorry Sir, but you live too far from a power station to get more than 1KW of electricity an hour". As well as being a vital economic tool in rural areas, broadband now is an integral part of everyone's quality of life, and Ofcom needs to wake up to the fact that the digital divide is worsening, not a problem solved.

UPDATE: I'm not surprised to see others coming to the same conclusion:

In their press release The CLA says "We are worried that anyone reading coverage of the OFCOM report will get a distorted view of the true picture. Everything is not rosy with broadband in the countryside, despite OFCOM's wanton optimism."

Simon Berry, Chief Executive & Founder of ruralnet, says "I was alarmed to hear a piece on the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme this morning. It said that OfCom had reported that broadband uptake in rural areas was now higher than it is in urban areas and that ‘a digital divide’ had been closed. This is so misleading that it beggars belief and will do a lot damage to the efforts of those campaigning for broadband in rural areas."

Smartinfotech is commenting: "That is, of course, complete nonsense. People in rural areas are far more likely to live further from their local telephone exchange than those in inner-cities. Consequently, ADSL connection speeds are often only a fraction of those achieved in urban areas, because the “last mile” of copper cabling drains away the speed."

streamyx-dsl65265 makes the valuable point that: "People living in the more rural areas of Britain are paying the same amount for their service, yet in many cases are getting much slower connection speeds due to the lack of exchanges in close proximity to their homes. This is assuming they can get a connection at all - there are still parts of the UK that aren't equipped for broadband at all."

Robin Goad Research Director at Hitwise UK has a very interesting post underlining the greater need for broadband in rural areas. Worth a read.

El Reg is also making a similar point: "Ofcom may claim it has the regional divide beaten for now, but the issue is certain to rear its ugly head again soon. The foot-dragging that characterised BT's rollout of ADSL to rural exchanges is sure to emerge once more as the UK's lack of a modern fibre to the premises telecoms infrastructure begins to bite."