32 Mbps broadband speed will be provided to 90 percent of the UK by 2019

A report that charts how internet access for customers in the UK has evolved in the last ten years was provided by the research company Point Topic, who are making the claims.

With claims that broadband might be driven to area that might have otherwise missed out, the Universal Service Commitment (USC) for broadband that was mandated by Lord Carter in the recent interim report of Digital Britain has been given a lot of praise by the report.

Chief analyst at Point Topic, Tim Johnson said “Some people say this is too little too late, but we believe that investing to deliver. 2Mb/sec could provide the platform for much higher-speed broadband services in areas where it wouldn’t otherwise happen for many years.”

Scotland currently has nearly a third of users that are incapable of receiving connection speeds of 2Mbps and are one of the areas that the report has included when talking about underserved and unserved areas of the country.

According to Johnson, however, the biggest benefit of USC would be that it will be able to provide a stable foundation for a future of much faster broadband connection speeds and will push many providers towards laying fibre-to-the-cabinet cabling.

He said “Bandwidth seems to be increasing in the same way as computer power. According to Moore’s Law, computer processors double in speed every 18 months – bandwidth has been increasing even faster than that. Under these conditions we expect the combination of cable and fibre connections to dominate in the future. If the USC and other announced investment plans are carried forward there will be over one million fibre lines in the UK by 2012.”