by Peter Barker
LONDON, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Ofcom, the official British communications regulator, has warned that Britain is lagging behind other nations in its broadband Internet speeds.
The warning comes after the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) also warned that Britain was trailing other nations in its Internet connectivity.
Ofcom's report showed that the UK's broadband speeds when compared with other nations were not impressive.
In the Netherlands 37 percent of households had broadband Internet connections at speeds of over 8 megabits (Mbps) a second. In Britain those speeds are available to only 10 percent of households.
Ofcom said that countries such as Sweden and France enjoyed faster access speeds than Britain.
The OECD report on Dec. 11 warned that the UK risked falling behind rivals if it did not invest in fast broadband.
SLOW NETWORK SPEED
The report put Britain just 21st out of 30 nations ranked by network speed. The OECD said in a statement on its website: "Future growth in super fast broadband is likely to come from fiber-optic networks, rather than DSL or cable. Nearly one in ten OECD subscribers currently accesses the Internet over fiber. In Japan and Korea, most people do. And fiber is growing fast in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the United States."
"This upgrade is important because high-speed broadband networks are increasingly seen as a fundamental infrastructure for the economy, like roads, water and electricity. Telecommunication firms have been investing heavily to upgrade older copper and coax networks to fiber to accommodate our ever increasing thirst for bandwidth," it added.
Across the world, the economic crisis has threatened to halt this investment just as consumers and businesses are using more Internet bandwidth.
However, the OECD found there is no shortage of willingness to make the most of the opportunities provided by faster Internet connections.
Over 30 percent of all British businesses sell goods or services over the Internet, the highest penetration among G7 countries. The share of e-commerce sales in total turnover is also among the highest in its area, said the OECD. And the share of broadband subscribers (29 percent in 2008) was the highest among G7 countries, it found.
Ofcom found that British businesses led their table of 12 developed nations (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Canada, Japan, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland) in taking up the Internet as an advertising platform, with 23.2 percent of advertising spent in Britain on the Internet.
Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the government's statistical arm, showed that 18.3 million households in Britain (70 percent) had Internet access in 2009. This is an increase of just under 2 million households (11 percent) over the last year and 4 million households (28 percent) since 2006. British estimates are not available prior to 2006.
The region with the highest level of access was London, with 80percent. The region with the lowest access level was Scotland, with 62 percent.
Some 63 percent of all British households had a broadband connection in 2009, up from 56 percent in 2008. Of those households with Internet access, 90 percent had a broadband connection in 2009, an increase from 69 percent in 2006.
The number of adults who had never accessed the Internet fell to 10.2 million (21 percent) in 2009.
ACHILLES' HEEL
But this eagerness to exploit the business opportunities of the Internet, and the high level of Internet and especially broadband penetration (95 percent of all connections are now broadband) could be an Achilles' Heel if access speeds are not able to keep up compared with international rivals.
The lack of even basic broadband in some rural areas has sparked concern at the highest levels. Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, spoke of his concern to the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "Access to the Internet is increasingly being considered a necessity. There is not a business in the country, with ambition to succeed, that does not have an email address or a website."
"Yet still too many rural households are currently unable to access the Internet at satisfactory speeds. The handicap this places on those businesses, schools, doctors' surgeries and local authorities, which inhabit so-called 'broadband deserts,' is immense," he added.
"And, even more worryingly, many of those who are being left behind in the Internet's 'slow lane' are the very same people who look after the countryside on our behalf -- Britain's livestock farmers," he stressed.
The British government has said it aims for everyone in the country to have access to the Internet broadband at speeds of 2Mbps by 2012.
The aim for 2017 is even more ambitious -- to see super-fast broadband available to 90 percent of the country by the end of the year. Super fast broadband is at speeds of 50Mbps or above.
In October this year Communications Minister Stephen Timms said that the 2Mbps proposed in the government's "Digital Britain" report was now a guaranteed minimum. The report had originally promised that the aim was to get the speed up to 2Mbps.
A new tax of 50p (about 0.81 U.S. dollars) per household with a landline per month is to provide funds for network investment.
Meanwhile, one of the global Internet business successes, Google, is one of the backers behind improved infrastructure -- and it's in the Asia-Pacific region, not Europe.
Google is part of a consortium behind the new Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC), the centerpiece of a 245-million-pound (about 400 million U.S. dollars) scheme that promises to be the largest capacity project yet built. Asian telecommunications companies, including Japan's KDDI and India's Reliance Globalcom, are joining Google in the project.
The SJC is planned to open in 2012, and will run 3,000 miles from Singapore to Japan -- with branches to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Guam. In total, it will consist of more than 5,000 miles of cable. The SJC will be able to handle up to 17terabits of data every second -- the equivalent of around 250m telephone lines.
