Enabling a Digitally United Kingdom - Umic

14 HOW INDIVIDUALS BENEFIT
The UK is not alone in its experience of growth in broadband take-up. In the 30 countries that make up
the OECD area, there were more than 82 million broadband subscribers at the end of 2003 – up from only
3 million four years earlier. 11
The reason for this growth is clear: compared to dial-up connections, broadband delivers a qualitatively different
and much enhanced user experience, and at a price that is becoming increasingly agreeable to the consumer.
Broadband connections are:
• fast: people with a broadband connection no longer have to wait, and wait some more to get a connection
to the internet. With broadband, the user can quickly send, receive and trade data-rich content, such as music
files, video files and photos; and
• ‘always on’: a broadband connection means that people no longer have to keep turning their internet
connections on and off throughout the day, and that users can simultaneously use the internet and the
telephone if they wish. This ‘always on’ potential makes the technology ever more ‘invisible’, enabling
a significantly improved user experience.
Broadband: a definition
‘Always-on access, at work, at home or on the move provided by a range of fixed-line, wireless and satellite
technologies to progressively higher bandwidths capable of supporting genuinely new and innovative
interactive content, applications and services and the delivery of enhanced public services.’
– Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) (2004): 3rd annual report & strategic recommendations.
The BSG recommends that, as a starting point, this would include higher bandwidth services (defined
as >256 Kbit/s by the OECD). The BSG anticipates progressive development through to the next
generations of broadband.
At present, around 84% of UK homes and businesses have access to broadband. 12 Although the distribution
is not currently uniform – which results in inferior services for rural areas of the UK 13,14 – BT’s plan to speed up
the delivery of broadband services to rural communities should bring near-universal coverage across the UK by
summer 2005.
People currently access broadband via PCs; but in the near future ‘third generation’ (3-G) phones will extend
the benefits of broadband to mobile communication devices in the UK. Already in Japan – where the 3-G
market is comfortably the most advanced in the world – 3-G mobiles deliver a wide range of added-value
benefits to the user. 15 In Japan, 3-G phones:
• serve as ‘swipe cards’ to get through ticket barriers on the East Japan Railway;
• enable people to pay for products at vending machines;
• provide easy access to video conferences;
• translate to and from foreign languages; and
• take very high-resolution pictures and videos.
11 Financial Times (2004) Pipeline points way to profits, FT IT review, 9 June, p.6.
12 Ofcom (2004) The Ofcom internet and broadband update.
13 Broadband Stakeholder Group (2003) The impact of public sector interventions on broadband in rural areas.
14 Countryside Agency (2003) Broadband in rural areas. Wetherby, West Yorkshire: Countryside Agency Publications.
15 The Times (2004) Power to go: mobiles that do it all. 5 June, p.3.