The Digital Britain project was launched by Lord Stephen Carter with the aim of securing the UK’s place at the forefront of innovation, investment and quality in the digital and communications industries. The comments below are in response to the project’s initial interim report.
Firstly, it is fair to say that the 80 page report achieves its main objective of setting out the challenges and opportunities of the digital age and identifying the issues we face, which after all, are issues that need addressing if we are to claw our way out of the recession.
It is certainly not acceptable that in this day and age, we still have 1.7million homes without access to broadband.
Despite the report’s less than ‘lukewarm’ reviews from within the industry and the media, its proposal to extend access to broadband for both households and businesses has to be a step in the right direction, even if it is only a speed of up to 2Mbps. However, there needs to be dialogue between business and government about how the existing set up is restricting business development.
Although it would be great for everyone to be able to access video files over the internet in time for the Olympics, which I’m sure increased bandwidth for all will achieve, the needs of small and medium sized businesses vary quite drastically.
Something that does need to be addressed is the way in which ISP’s treat businesses the same as general consumers in terms of file transfer. A business moving large volumes of information from one place to another via the internet, often as essential back up measures, is restricted in the same way that consumers are on peer-to-peer file sharing. Issues like this simply highlight that the requirements for consumers and businesses are very different. A one size fits all approach, no matter what size bandwidth, is not going to enable businesses to embrace our full digital potential.
However, having said this, the report does propose a 'rights agency' to combat piracy and support innovations that allow legal content distribution, so hopefully by the time the full report comes out in May, some of the restrictions on businesses might start being investigated further.
The report does seem to try and address far too many issues in one go and contains elements of a ‘papering over the cracks’ approach. However, the report has created much debate which is good for the country and Lord Carter seems to want to listen. In response to the sheer volume of feedback a Digital Britain Report discussion website has even been created: www.digitalbritainforum.org.uk.
