UK broadband update February 2016

A roundup of February’s UK broadband policy developments:

Business Secretary Sajid Javid announced a new review of business broadband to be led jointly by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It will specifically look at “increasing the level of affordable and high quality fibre broadband available to businesses. It will assess what steps can be taken to encourage choice and competition which will help drive down prices while delivering a better service.”

In a speech to the EEF National Manufacturing Conference the Business Secretary announced that the review would “look at the whole issue of leased lines and the role they play in the market”:

“We recognise that leased lines need to be competitively priced. We want to see charge controls on leased lines where appropriate, and, of course, we want to see more competition in the provision of broadband services and products.”

The review will also take in to account both the outcomes from Ofcom’s Strategic Review of Digital Communications announced this week and the findings from its recent Business Connectivity Market Review, which will be published next month. Earlier in the month the EEF reported on survey findings which revealed that 91% of companies regard internet access as essential as electricity and water, with two thirds reporting their current connectivity as being OK for now, but over half fear it will not be adequate for their future needs. Only a fifth of companies believe the UK is at the forefront of internet connectivity.

The Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) published findings from its pilot projects exploring options for delivering superfast broadband to the hardest to reach parts of the UK (more background here). The seven pilot projects include Avanti and Satellite Internet, who are using superfast-capable satellite; Airwave, Quickline and AB Internet, who are using fixed wireless; and Call Flow and Cybermoor, who are using a mix of fibre and fixed wireless technologies. The pilots have been successful, demonstrating that suppliers can successfully mix technologies to deliver cost-effective superfast broadband solutions in hard to reach areas. They have also shown that smaller suppliers can bid for, win and deliver open public procurements at competitive costs, including meeting the necessary EU-wide State aid requirements for receiving public funding.

DCMS also announced that new build homes will have superfast broadband connectivity following an agreement between Openreach and the Home Builders Federation (HBF). The initiative will see fibre based broadband offered to all new developments either for free or as part of a co-funded initiative. It is estimated that more than half of all new build properties can be connected to fibre broadband free of charge to developers. This month also saw the publication of DCMS’s Broadband performance indicator for December 2015; 3,625,369 premises had a superfast broadband service made available by the end of December 2015 as a result of Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) supported projects.

Other developments this month:

• Nesta and Tech City UK published Tech Nation 2016, which reported that the Digital Tech Economy employs 1.56 million people and grew almost three times faster than the rest of the workforce between 2011 and 2014. Sevent-five per cent of digital tech businesses are found outside of London, and so are 80 per cent of Digital Tech Economy jobs.
• ThinkBroadband reported that the UK is now within 0.8% of the original BDUK phase 1 superfast broadband target that superfast broadband should be available to 90% of premises.
• The Fibre to the Home (FTTH) Council Europe reported that the number of FTTH and fibre to the building (FTTB) subscribers in Europe increased by 19% over the first nine months of 2015, reaching more than 35.9 million FTTH/B subscribers. However the UK remains absent from the rankings; see commentary from ISP Review.
• The European Commission published its 2016 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) Country Profiles (slides are also available). DESI “summarises relevant indicators on Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU member states in digital competitiveness”; see this previous post for details of last year’s profiles. The UK’s profile reports that next generation access is available to 91% of British households but the UK fell from 4th to 6th place in the rankings for mobile and fixed line broadband connectivity; again, see commentary from ISP Review.