The Broadband future report

Download full report in PDF format  [1M]

SUMMARY

In recent years, the debate about broadband has been dominated by a fixation with benchmarks - for availability, for reach, for a competitive market, for price. Those targets have been reached - more than seven million homes in the UK have DSL broadband, more than 99.6 per cent of homes have access to it, and the UK has the most thriving competitive broadband market in Europe, including more than two million cable broadband connections.

So where do we go from here? What does having broadband actually mean, to people, to business, to our society and our economy? We’ve worked hard to bring this technology to people, but why should they want it and what will they do with it - both now and in the future?

The report downloadable above, is about the opportunities that broadband brings. It’s not a corporate vision, but an attempt to spark off the next stage of an important debate.

Within the report you will find the voices of many of the key players from across BT, from industry, from Government and from community groups. Some of the views we agree with, others we may not. But they all contribute to what needs to be a vibrant discussion on how to make this country’s tremendous technology assets enable positive change in making people’s lives more flexible and fulfilling, and to help deliver ensuring economic benefit through more efficient businesses.

The report debates three basic questions: what are the opportunities broadband creates? What is getting in the way of these opportunities becoming reality? And what do we - collectively - have to do to shift those obstacles?

We are interested in what people think of the report and how they visualise what a broadband future will look like, so please use this opportunity to feedback to us.