Government and telcos meet to discuss faster broadband

Minister for competitiveness, Stephen Timms will meet with telco executives and Ofcom to discuss how to bring about faster broadband in the UK.

Mr. Timms, has previously raised concerns over the state of Broadband in the UK, warning that the UK risks falling behind other competing nations, who are leading the way in providing a much faster broadband network. 

This has been chiefly due to the investment in a fibre-based network by these countries, with speeds of up to 100Mbps available in some countries.  Mr. Timms believes that faster broadband is essential to the UK economy, going forward.

Telecoms excutives, including BT CEO, Ben Verwaayen, and representitives from Virgin Media, Sky and Carphone Warehouse are among those expected to attend.

The availability of media rich content, such as TV programmes and movies and the widespread use of file sharing and peer to peer software, is leading to an increase in bandwidth usage.  That is, more data is flowing through these networks than ever before.

Many believe that at some stage, the UK’s networks will be unable to cope unless much of the BT copper based network from telephone exchanges to a user’s premises, is upgraded, in part at least, to a fibre based solution.