Broadband not 'fit for purpose' says rural body

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) has poured scorn on a recent survey from IT firm Cisco which said that while UK broadband speeds lag behind other countries, they are currently fit for UK purposes.

Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, president of the association, which represents rural business and communities, said rural areas all over the UK continue to suffer from poor broadband connections.

His comments come just after the Government said it would press ahead with introducing a £6 a year broadband tax on fixed telephone lines.

Revenue raised would be used to fund next-generation high-speed broadband for areas that would not otherwise get this. This is because they are considered commercially unviable by internet service providers.

The CLA welcomed these proposals but Mr Aubrey-Fletcher said it was nowhere near enough to ensure rural areas would get high-speed services. And he said the survey showed the Government still wasn’t doing enough to close this digital divide.

“The survey says that the global download speed is 4.75Mbits/sec. This highlights just how wrong our Government is in saying it wants to increase UK broadband to speeds of up to 2Mbits/sec. It needs to recognise that the UK must aim for up to 10Mbits/sec broadband speeds to compete globally,” he said.

The Cisco survey carried out jointly by Oxford University's Said Business School and Spain's University of Oviedo's Department of Applied Economics, put countries into four groups: ready for tomorrow; comfortable for today; meeting needs for today; and below needs for today.

It placed the UK 25th out of 66 countries in terms of quality and coverage. But it found countries such as Latvia and Bulgaria were better prepared than the UK for next-generation internet applications.

The UK was listed among countries whose broadband is 'meeting needs for today'. South Korea and Japan continue to dominate the league table, largely due to their commitment to fast networks.

However despite not being ready for future applications, the Cisco survey said the UK was well placed to cope with today's network demands.