Challenge for government with regards to 2Mbps pledge

Experts have recently stated that the government faces a real challenge with regards to living up to its pledge to bring UK broadband up to a minimum of 2Mbps.

According to some industry experts the UK’s government is set to face a real challenge when it comes to bringing UK broadband up to a minimum of 2Mbps, which is what it has pledged to do. Analysis firm, PointTopic, has recently carried out research into areas that do not have very high Internet speeds, and has produced a report detailing its findings.

The area that was shown to be suffering the most with regards to slow Internet speeds was Northern Ireland, according to the results of the survey. The results showed that around thirty percent of households in this area were out of reach of 2Mpbs speeds. Wales was not far behind, with just under twenty seven percent of households unable to reach speeds of 2Mbps or over.

However, 2Mbps speeds were only out of reach for around 1.2 percent of London, although the worst affected households were those that were quite close to the city. Tim Johnson, chief analyst with Point Topic, said: “Towns such as Basingstoke and Milton Keynes which people might expect to be well connected have notspots. The scale of the task is massive and in order to achieve it there needs to be co-operation between government, the regulator and operators such as BT.”

He also added that the future did look bright for broadband in the UK providing the government backed the right technology, stating: “We forecast that over 90% of UK homes could have broadband access in 10 years time, almost all with speeds of 32Mbps. We think that fibre is the right way to go. That will provide the UK with a future-proofed network.”