Clause 61 - Obligations to be secured by universal service conditions
Communications Bill
12:30 pm
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon and East Chelmsford, Conservative)
I am grateful to you for that, Mr. Gale.
I acknowledge that the amendment is flawed and deficient, but it is terribly important that we have the opportunity to talk about broadband. It is of enormous importance, and it is extraordinary that the Government's publication, ''The draft Communications Bill—The Policy'', relegates the Government's policy on broadband to an annexe, which states:
''This comprehensive strategy does not require any legislation in order to achieve its objectives. As a result we are not looking to the Bill to help deliver our strategy.''
Given that the Bill will set the framework for communications for probably the next decade, it should take account of the fact that making broadband available is the biggest challenge that we face as a nation in terms of modernising our economy and rolling out the technology.
One reason why I accept that the amendment is deficient is that it is almost impossible to define broadband. In this country, it is regarded as the service that is now on offer from cable providers and BT at the rate of some 128 kilobits per second, or perhaps 512. Some cable companies intend to go further and supply the service at 1 megabit per second. I dial up my internet service provider daily to download my e-mails and access the internet, and I find the current speed on narrowband access incredibly frustrating—even 128 kilobits per second would be a big improvement. It will, no doubt, become faster, so it would probably be unhelpful even to try to define broadband formally at this stage. However, it is probably fair to say that even if we do not attempt to provide a formal definition, most of us know what it is when we see it.
Why is broadband important? It allows people to access a greater range of services: currently, people talk about downloading films or playing computer games, but it goes much further. Broadband is of huge economic importance to the nation. One recent study suggested that success in the new technologies, which means broadband in particular, could increase the United Kingdom's non-inflationary rate of growth from 2.5 per cent. to 3.5 per cent. in the next three years. A recent report entitled ''The Payoff Of Ubiquitous Broadband Deployment'' shows a positive correlation between broadband penetration and GDP per capita, which is already clear in the United States. There will be a real economic benefit to our nation if we can achieve much wider broadband access than we have at present.
The problem is that broadband can be made available through a variety of means. Most people who currently have access to broadband have it because they are cable subscribers, either to NTL or to Telewest, or because they have obtained it through BT, via ADSL technology. However, ADSL technology has flaws—for a start, it can be supplied
only to homes that are within 5.5 km of an enabled exchange. That means that even if BT eventually enables all its exchanges, there will be areas of the country where people cannot access broadband through that means.
It is therefore important that we consider all the other potential mechanisms for making broadband available. The Radiocommunications Agency is currently auctioning 12 licences to provide broadband fixed wireless access—we may discuss that later in our proceedings. There is also the potential development of satellite—I am talking about a one-way download from satellite first, but in due course a two-way download may be possible, although that is likely, at least in the short term, to be too expensive for residential customers. 3G, too, offers possibilities through the ability to access broadband through mobile telephony once 3G finally gets going.
Further ahead in the future, all sorts of other technologies will appear, some of which it is impossible even to guess at now. Perhaps one day, there will be the prospect of optical fibre linking exchanges first, then extending to the kerb, and finally into the home. That would make broadband available at a speed that is now almost inconceivable.