How should government intervene with superfast?

For all the promise of eParticipation initiatives, barriers to participation centric to eInclusion (such as digital literacy and access) loom as increasingly prevalent.  A renewed fear is that expanding technological horizons will create fresh gaps between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.

Next Generation Access (NGA) or, put simply, ‘fibre’ connections for superfast broadband are already in-place in countries such as Japan, Korea and Singapore.  For those lucky enough to get it, connections are more reliable and typically offer six-fold speed increases compared to current broadband.  More significantly, European nations are at a decision making stage about roll-out and upgrade.

Why do we need superfast broadband?  For a start, everyday household items such as televisions and fridge-freezers are becoming internet enabled.  This creates more parallel demand, for example, watching high-definition IPTV while your health is being monitored via telemedicine.  Secondly the extra capacity offers resilience and the possibility for a new generation of applications.

But the cost is vast, an estimated £29 billion for a UK national infrastructure. This is hard to swallow when the demand for high consumption is currently still limited to a minority and wireless technologies are increasingly competitive.

The danger is that the business model for NGA will be based on high-consumption countries, cities or economic ‘hot-spots’ first - those which offer a good return on investment.  On this basis the citizens most in-need of NGA, such as those alienated in rural communities, could be the last to adopt.

The challenge for the eParticipation community will be to harness the power of superfast broadband while catering for with the lowest common denominator and ensuring that business benefits do not dwarf social ones.  A new round of eInclusion policy is sure to follow….anybody fancy a bet on the outcome?              

Tags: eInclusion, NGA