Broadband growth could be limited by expensive business rates says industry

The cost of business rates that new fibre optic broadband networks will be charged is to be negotiated later this week during a meeting between the Valuation office and a group consisting of members of the public and industry representative.

The spokesman for Eurim, which is a parliamentary-industry discussion group, Philip Virgo describes the current rating system as “the biggest single barrier to joined-up investment in low-cost resilient UK broadband.”

The use of partnerships to allow for the broadband networks that serve communities to be expanded is being blocked and private investment is being pushed away by the system advised Virgo recently.

A new body called COTS (Commercial, Operations and Technical Standards), which will be investigating network interoperability between networks, is being set up The Broadband Stakeholders Group, a group made up mainly of operators and network equipment suppliers all with vested interests in the industry.

Access to the main national broadband infrastructure networks, which are run by Virgin Media, BT and other key network operators, by community broadband networks is the main goal of implementing these standards according to COTS.

In order to meet the target promised by the government in the recently release Digital Britain report, which is for a minimum of 2Mbps broadband access to be available to every home in the UK by 2012, it is hoped that the new standards will enable both the spread and perhaps the reduction in the cost of deploying fibre optic broadband technology to far more homes at a much faster rate.

It is widely believe that community run broadband network throughout the UK will prove invaluable in provided far more super fast fibre-optic broadband services to more consumers throughout the UK over the next couple of years.

Source – www.computerweekly.com