Stephen Timms want the UK to move on with Next Gen Broadband
The treasury minister of the United Kingdom who is also the person in charge of the Digital Britain affairs including digital inclusion, the rollout of the next generation super fast broadband service across the United Kingdom and the implementation of the 50p per month broadband tax on the fixed phone lines of the country, has revealed his views on the broadband future of Britain after 2017 and the proposed broadband tax.
As a matter of fact, Stephen Timms has revealed his views in an interview given to the technology website Silicon.com. He defended the country’s falling behind many other nations in the world in the broadband speed context stating that the United Kingdom has been over the last ten years consistently closing its notorious gap with the other leading economies in Europe, largely by adoption and take up of digital technology.
Timms further said in reply to the question of the interviewer Natasha Lomas on the United Kingdom still lagging behind even some of the Asian countries besides the US in fibre optic broadband rollout that in contrast to all these countries’ application in the field of fibre optic broadband networks, which had been ongoing since long time back, in the UK the fibre optic commercial broadband rollout by BT has only started recently.
Moreover, the treasury minister also pointed out that the fibre optic service rolled out by BT was more expensive and considerably slower than the 100Mbps fibre broadband service of Hong Kong. As a matter of fact, the fastest download rate BT allowed with its fibre broadband is 40Mbps and the fastest upload rate is 10Mbps (Virgin Media is giving a 50Mbps broadband connection).
Finally, Timms said on the progress of Digital Britain initiative in the United Kingdom that he did not think that the people in the UK have missed the boat, as moving quickly ahead through the lines would definitely yield great results, although to move ahead at full throttle in the broadband segment, public funding was highly required.
On the 50p broadband tax, he said that the broadband internet consumers in the United Kingdom needed to keep on moving, and the broadband tax would have given such a move the necessary foothold required by it.
