The UK is trailing when it comes to access to next-generation broadband, new figures show.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the UK is placed 21st out of 30 in terms of speed – below countries such as Greece and Portugal.
A report issued following an OECD conference on “empowering e-consumers”, held in Washington, USA in early December 2009, suggests that investment by governments in fibre-optic networks is likely to bring greater economic returns in other areas.
When it comes to broadband penetration, the UK is in mid-table – placed 13th out of the 30 OECD members.
But most of these subscribers still access broadband via so-called DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) rather than via fibre-optics, according to a BBC report.
Overall, nearly one in 10 OECD subscribers currently accesses the internet in this more advanced way, including a majority of users in Japan and Korea, with fast growth also being seen in the United States and Scandinavia.
Japanese internet users enjoy access speeds almost ten times faster than nearly all of their competitors, and 20 times faster than typical speeds in the US, according to figures in the report.
The quickest adopters are being actively helped by support from their governments, the OECD report finds.
It concludes that such subsidies are justified because of the benefits broadband can make in four key sectors of the economy – electricity, health, education and transportation.
“If you cut one per cent off the costs of education, electricity, health and transport you would more than pay for a fibre network,” said Taylor Reynolds of the technology division of the OECD.
“That is the type of thinking required by countries considering rolling out next-generation networks,” he added.
With the UK’s broadband population standing at nearly 18 million, take-up of the technology is good but there are concerns about how quickly the UK is rolling out super-fast services.
The government wants to see super-fast broadband available to 90 per cent of the country by the end of 2017.
Superfast broadband is generally regarded as speeds of 50Mbps (megabits per second) or above.
Currently the UK’s phone system operator and major infrastructure owner, British Telecom, plans to offer a mixture of fibre technologies to around 40 per cent of the country, while Virgin Media has made cable broadband – capable of speeds of around 50Mbps – available to half of UK homes.
The UK government has announced a £6 a year tax on fixed-line phones to raise funds for the 30 per cent of the country that it estimates won’t get super-fast broadband under existing commercial broadband plans.
It hopes to raise around £170m a year through the levy, although the Conservatives have vowed to scrap the tax if they win the next election.