The future broadband or fibre based broadband network (FTTH) has already been a reality in countries like Japan, Korea and Taiwan. This technology offers up to 100 Mbps speed which is ideal for broadband activities like downloading music, video, gaming and other data transmissions which require superfast connections and much lower attenuation levels.

In the UK, the broadband services are offered using copper wires or cable network which do not have capacities to deliver more than 50 Mbps. Moreover, the poor line quality and the degradation of speed with distance often contribute to the poor service quality & the long debated discrepancy between actual speed and the advertised speed. To aggravate it, the UK broadband providers are too hesitant to take active participation in changing the present scenario to next generation levels thanks to the lots of money they have to pump in to replace the present copper wires with optical fibre cables.

Both the government and Ofcom, the UK telecom watchdog have long been asking the leading UK broadband providers like BT, Virgin Media, Carphone Warehouse and Vodafone to make this transition as swiftly as possible. The 21CN programme of BT broadband which promises high speed broadband is expected to be completed by next year.

Meanwhile, the cable giant Virgin Media has made some impressive advancement in terms of speeds. Its broadband packages have been upgraded to higher speeds this year, its XL service is offering up to 20 Mbps to its cable broadband customers. In addition, Virgin is also testing its trial 50 Mbps service in selected areas in the UK.

While a few broadband suppliers including BT broadband service offer speed up to 24 Mbps using ADSL+2 , some of the high-end users still feel the broadband speeds fail to meet their expectations. It is found that only one-tenths of these highspeed broadband subscribers get speeds closer to the maximum speed as the phone lines lose much of the signals with increasing distance.

The recent Financial Times report highlights this issue with a open discussion launched by Stephen Timms, the competitiveness minister asking the leading participants like BT, Carphone Warehouse, Vodofone, BSkyB and Virgin Media to build a network like FTTH to provide higher speeds to the customers.

While the solution to this issue can be nothing but switching to fibre-optic network, it is yet to been how ISPs will respond to it, as this transition to next generation broadband will cost more than £15bn.