Broadband News & Mobile Broadband News

The high costs of building the huge data centres required to support the government’s Digital Britain plans could force companies to build them in Europe and thus hinder broadband speed progress within the UK.

The claims come from Derek Webster, an Associate Director of McBains Cooper who told the Times that the average data centre uses as much power as the city of Leicester.

The restricted broadband speeds are likely to mainly affect small businesses and those who work from home.

It could also affect the financial sector, with Webster saying, “When it comes to, say, the financial services industry, a delay in movement of information or money of a millisecond can cost tens and millions of dollars. So the demand is to keep those data centre servers close by”.

Expensive land and electricity prices as well as patchy fibre optic infrastructure just outside of London is making the UK an unsuitable place to build data centres.

Unless these prices change, it’s likely that the Digital Britain report will have its major organs placed in other European countries such as Germany, France and Sweden.

A surprise 50p per month broadband tax has been recommended in Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report.

The new tax, if it goes through, will apply to every home and business with a phone line and help raise an estimated £175 million a year.

The government will make this money available each year to broadband providers like BT to help them fund the roll out of super-fast fibre optic broadband to around 90% of UK homes by 2017.

Ian Fogg, an analyst with Forrester research, believes the sums quoted in the report do not stack up. He said “There are around 34 million fixed lines in the UK and at £6 a year this is going to raise in the low hundreds of millions each year. This is some way off BT’s budget of £1.5bn to put fibre in 40% of homes by 2012″.

Ian continued, “There is going to be a two-tiered internet for a long time, whether the government likes it or not”.

The Digital Britain report also outlined plans to take £200 million from the BBC licence fee to invest in a range of broadband solutions to ensure every UK home has at least 2Mbps broadband access by 2012.

This would again involve giving money to fixed line, wireless and mobile broadband providers.

Sir Michael Lyons, The BBC Trust chairman, reacted angrily to the plan, saying, “The licence fee must not become a slush fund to be dipped into at will, leading to spiralling demands on licence fee payers to help fund the political or commercial concerns of the day.” This would lead to the licence fee being seen as another form of general taxation”.

Conversely, shares in BT surged by 5.8%, buoyed by the news that the company could be receiving significant funding to help roll out its fibre optic broadband network.

The time has finally come for the Digital Britain report to be published and unveiled to the UK. While a lot of the report has been outlined back in January, it is thought that today’s published report will have a few surprises in store.

This afternoon Lord Carter will stand up at the RSA in London and give his vision for the UK’s digital future. The report has taken eight months of solid research and lobbying and it is hoped that it will completely overhaul the UK’s digital infrastructure and guarantee the development of the country’s economy.

So just how important is the Digital Britain report going to be? Chris Williams, the partner of Economic Consulting at Deloitte, said, “This report is critical. Though how critical will remain to be seen.”

There are five main objectives in the report and it is thought that there will be more than 40 action points outlined this afternoon too.

The main goal of the report is to provide all UK homes with a broadband connection speed of at least 2Mbps by the time the Olympic Games reaches the country in 2012.

There is also speculation that the report will require the BBC to give up part of the £3.6 billion in public funding in order to help out ITV who are currently struggling.

Online music and movie piracy will also be addressed as a major issue in the report with plans for a new rights agency to be introduced to help put a stop to illegal file sharing.

One thing is for sure, there will certainly be a few surprises unveiled in the report this afternoon – which will create a lot of debate and criticism.

Lord Carter, the Communications Minister, is reportedly set to quit the Government after the Digital Britain report is published on the 16th June.

It is no secret that the compilation of the Digital Britain report, designed to help shape the UK’s Internet and Media regulation, has caused a lot of debate and criticism since its inception.

Despite this, the reasons behind Lord Carter’s intending departure are not clear, with the Times indicating that he has a desire to return to the private sector.

There has been reports of strong disagreements between ministers over whether government funding should be used to help the broadband sector, and in particular Lord Carter’s goal of achieving 2Mb broadband access for all by 2012.

In recent weeks Gordon Brown has enlisted the help of two top tech industry figures, Sir Alan Sugar and Sir Tim-Berners Lee to boost credentials and help to enhance the internet sector – so news of Lord Carter’s departure will come as a blow.

There is also talk that the co-founder of Lastminute.com, Martha Lane Fox, is also joining the ranks as a digital champion.

The Government has been warned that its Digital Britain plan could increase illegal downloads, with the music and film industry potentially being a thing of the past unless anti-piracy measures are introduced soon.

The warning follows a recent survey carried out by the Industry Trust where more than 30 directors of film and TV companies stated their concerns about the damage caused to their industries by piracy.

94% of them stated that if there wasn’t stronger support from the government, the damage caused may not be fixable.

The Industry Trust’s Director General, Liz Bale, recognises that the film and TV industries are not currently as affected by piracy as the music industry. However, she still feels that it is a wake up call for the government.

She said, “If the current framework hasn’t changed in five years, the UK industry will have become insignificant. This is a wake-up call for government as well as industry.”

Liz continued, “Digital Britain proposes creating a massive hub in the UK of innovative content creators and publishers, and net-savvy civilians backed up by digital literacy. But in opening the floodgates for business we need to make sure we are not enabling illegal businesses. We need to clear the undergrowth, in the governments own language.”

The worry over the rise in illegal downloads comes as new super-fast fibre optic broadband speeds are planned across many parts of the UK – potentially making it faster than ever for people to download movies and music illegally.