If you have any doubts about how important mobile phones are to us all then a story on the BBC web site will make you think again. This morning the BBC released the results of a crowd-sourcing survey they had carried out into the 3G coverage across the UK.
I must confess I had low expectations about the recently published Digital Britain report. The news media prior to publication had invented a number of stories about how little would be delivered in the report many of which turned out to be wide of the mark. Judging by the press stories today after publication many had not read the report properly (although to be fair it is 245 pages) and the stories were on the whole negative. However there are some rays of sunshine in the report not least in the area of broadband and the universal service commitment. This is an area where on first generation broadband the UK was in the forefront but with Korea , Japan and others announcing new initiatives the UK was in danger of being left behind. The problem is that with the credit crunch and the need to bail/bale (sic) out the banks the Government is essentially rather short of cash. Although to fund the rollout of superfast broadband is fairly modest (£15-30Bn) in the scheme of things it would be politically difficult for the government to underwrite this amount. So, by the approach being taken of funding the USC by using funding left over from DSO and a mixture of other funding, it allows the industry to deliver by around 2012 a near 100% broadband coverage at 2MBit/s. In addition the industry is stepping up to delivering faster broadband by announcing plans to cover between 40-60% of the population with the levy on every telephone line delivering the rest. Ah I hear you say it is too little too late and why should we pay for the upgrades. We live in a culture where we expect everything free and if we can’t have it we don’t understand why. The UK BB market is one of the most competitive in the world and there is no margin for investment in new technology. What the levy does is to allow the operators to invest in covering the last third of the country which wouldn’t otherwise be covered, so as to give the benefits of better broadband for all. So far all I’ve seen in the press and on the blogs is that the levy is wrong but I’ve not seen anywhere an alternative solution that is better. Come on find me a better way of doing it!