Millions of pounds in public funds are being spent building a UK broadband network that will not be fast enough to deal with the internet needs of the future and may have to be replaced, the House of Lords has warned.
The government's internet strategy and the way it is awarding £530m of public funds to extend connections to rural communities have been criticised as flawed and liable to widen the digital divide by the Lords communication committee, which on Tuesday published the findings of its six-month inquiry into the state of the nation's broadband infrastructure.
"The spectre of a widening digital divide is a profound source of concern which requires the government to address its origin with greater vigour than we believe is currently the case," the committee said in its report.
Urging ministers to set out an even bolder vision for broadband policy than is currently the case, the committee said that BT was the only company likely to end up winning the public funds being awarded via the BDUK process to develop rural broadband, and that it was designing a network that would stifle competition and not be future proof.
The report said: "[BT] is planning to use this public funding to invest in … technologies which may meet the speed targets set by the government, but which looking beyond 2015 are both relatively constrained and liable to necessitate an expensive phase of upgrade, if not outright replacement in the future."
It suggests instead that the government should look at the cost of creating a national network of "fibre hubs", essentially boxes placed within every town and village which are connected by fibre to the wider internet.
These hubs would allow the many local broadband networks being created by rural communities around the UK to plug into BT's pipes, at a set price and with a standard interface.
Source: The Guardian
