Broadband News & Mobile Broadband News

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.

Mobile operator Orange has offered to fix the UK’s broadband coverage problems by building a UK wide network that provides broadband access to all UK homes.

In return, the company would like a bigger share of the radio spectrum owned by O2 and Vodafone, together with the extension, indefinitely, of its 3G license.

The offer forms part of Orange’s 68 page response to Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report, where the Communications Minister called for every home in the UK to have access to up to 2Mbps broadband speeds by 2012.

Since the report was published in January, Lord Carter has held a series of meetings with the UK’s top fixed line and mobile broadband providers in an effort to thrash out a solution to the UK’s broadband coverage problems.

One such solution is using the UK’s mobile phone networks to fill the fixed line broadband gaps in rural areas – a solution that has resulted in Lord Carter asking both O2 and Vodafone to share part of their radio spectrum as they are the closest to the analogue TV signal.

The two companies have until April to either agree or come up with an alternative solution – with Lord Carter prepared to force them both to give up some of their spectrum for other companies, like Orange, to use.

The Orange report also revealed how it proposes to address the problem of illegal online file sharing. It said:

“The real key to combating unlawful file-sharing and copyright infringement online is (a) education and (b) the development and popularisation of legitimate and compelling content distribution business models.”

Overall, there has been a number of ideas floating around as to how the proposals put forward in the Digital Britain report can be met. This new offer by Orange is certainly something for Lord Carter to think about – though the large portion of spectrum required by Orange may not go down well with license owners, Vodafone and O2.

As Lord Carter pushes to get broadband access into every UK home by 2012, Ofcom boss Ed Richards has revealed new figures which show that many people don’t actually want broadband in their homes.

Over 40% of the 25 million households within the UK do not currently have broadband access. There are varying reasons for this and it seems that more than half of them (55%) actually choose not to have the service in their home. This group of people are known as the “self excluded” group.

30% cannot afford to have broadband access in their homes and are known to be “financially excluded” while 15% cannot afford the service and don’t particularly want it either – the “duel excluded” households.

In his Digital Britain report, Lord Carter not only wants every home in the UK to have broadband access by 2012, he also wants them to have a minimum broadband speed of 2Mbps.

Currently around 15% of UK homes (1.5 million households) are unable to receive the 2Mbps broadband download speed target.

Overall these figures show that whilst every UK home may have access to broadband (either fixed or mobile) in the future, there are many households that simply do not want it.

Either way, a lot of work still needs to be done to improve the UK’s broadband infrastructure to meet the expectations laid down in Lord Carter’s Digital Britain Report.

In order to reach the Government’s target of providing broadband access in every UK home by 2012, Lord Carter is now asking the BBC to help fund part of the UK’s broadband plans.

When talking about how the issue of funding is potentially hindering the UK’s new superfast fibre optic broadband plans, Lord Carter stated: “Would the nation’s state funded content provider have a role in this? It would seem to me it would.”

The BBC would not be the only broadcaster to be asked to fund broadband access. Sky, Virgin Media and Tiscali have all got interests in content production and high speed internet access and may well be asked aswell.

With high numbers of people looking at media content online (up to 20% of media consumption will soon be web based), it will no doubt be in the BBC’s best interests to enable more people to view the content it posts online.

The news that the BBC could contribute to the funding of broadband networks comes as welcome news to many industry experts.

Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, the president of the Country Land Association, said “We won’t have universal broadband in rural areas without significant public investment. We have already said that a proportion of the BBC license fee should be used to contribute to the cost of this.”

However, whilst BBC funding will help, it is not going to solve the funding issue. More funding is needed by more companies to ensure that the broadband goal of reaching every home in the UK is possible by 2012.

Lord Carter has for the first time defended his interim Digital Britain report and in particular his decision to set a 2Mbps minimum speed target for UK broadband.

The Digital Britain report which Lord Carter introduced at the end of January has publically come under fire from critics in the industry.

Darren Waters, who writes on the BBC News dot.life blog covered this earlier this month when he said “Many in the industry were hoping that Lord Carter would drive the adoption of high speed broadband by setting a much higher speed as the minimum for everyone”.

Until now Lord Carter has remained quiet over the criticism, however, he is now defending the report stating, “Those who say that a Universal Service Obligation of 2Mbps is a ludicrously low ambition miss the point”.

Speaking at a meeting which was organised by Nesta, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, he also defended his decision to make broadband available to all households in the UK.

“There is going to be 30% of the country not covered by traditional markets and I’m not prepared to leave them behind” said Carter. “It is not an option to say that we will find a mop-up solution in 10 years time.”

The full version of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report is due to be published in May. He stated that the point of the interim report was to allow people to debate the plans and to come up with realistic solutions to the current broadband restrictions.