An industry official has stated at a recent forum that there is a distinct conflict between the provision of universal broadband and the provision of high speed broadband in the UK.

Two of the issues that always seem to be at the forefront when it comes to broadband services is accessibility to broadband services and the speed of broadband services that consumers and businesses are able to receive. At present the government and Internet providers are working together both to provide universal broadband to as much of the UK as possible and to increase the speeds that broadband users are able to achieve.

However, one industry official has said that there is a clear conflict between the provision of universal broadband and the provision of higher speed broadband, and that he didn’t think that it was possible to have both at the same time. Peter Bazalgette, non-executive director at digital video syndication firm myvideorights.com, was speaking at the recent Westminster eForum.

He stated: “There is a conflict, in my opinion, between having fast broadband and having universal broadband. I don’t believe we can have both at the same time at the same pace.” He added that he thought priority needed to go to the provision of faster broadband speeds rather than on providing universal broadband access.

He said that the UK government needed to focus its efforts on ensuring that broadband speeds in the UK were improved before tackling the issues relating to universal broadband access. His comments have come just as a recent study into global broadband speeds showed that the UK was lagging behind many other countries, coming in at a rather poor twenty first out of thirty countries in terms of speeds.

Source – Broadband-Finder