The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has criticised the Government’s “unambitious” broadband programme, calling it “not fit for purpose”, and has called for market reform and a new approach to rolling out rural coverage.
Comparing the UK’s programme with other countries, such as Finland and South Korea, the FSB says that the Government’s targets are not ambitious enough and that there should be a minimum of 10Mbps, or megabits per second, for all homes and businesses by 2017, rising to 1Gbps (gigabits per second) by 2030.
A spokesman for the FSB, which commissioned a recent report into the state of broadband access in small firms, said that if small businesses are to prosper and contribute to the growing economy they need universal access to what is now considered “the fourth utility”.
According to the report, 94 per cent of small business owners consider a reliable internet connection critical to the success of their business but 45,000 small firms in the UK are still on dial-up speeds and only 15 per cent of those polled said they were “very satisfied” with their broadband provision.
The report recommends that the Government should prioritise the delivery of fibre-optic broadband to new and existing business parks, reform the broadband market and generally be more ambitious about its national broadband strategy, which is currently only to provide 95 per cent coverage of the UK with speeds of 24Mbps or higher by 2017, with the rest having a minimum speed of 2Mbps.
However, according to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which is co-ordinating the rollout, the report does not reflect the real picture, although it concedes that it “rightly highlights the growing importance of broadband to businesses in the digital age”.
A DCMS spokesman added that the Government will publish a digital communications infrastructure strategy by the end of this year, to consider broadband infrastructure plans over the next 10 to 15 years.
