Nick Jones

The UK government just released the final version of its “Digital Britain” report which is a wide-ranging 238 page tome that talks about the future of broadband, wireless networks, digital radio, TV, the BBC, copyright, digital piracy, IT skills, cyber security and digital public services. The report is strong on broad ideas and rather weaker on detailed implementation, and as you’d expect in a report prepared for politicians it identifies lots of opportunities for further prevarication (sorry, I meant to say consultation). However there are some excellent ideas here too; a few of the of the issues – both good and bad – that struck me include:

Universal broadband. The need for universal broadband is acknowledged, but the goal for 2012 is a snail-like 2 Mbps. The report stresses this is the lowest common denominator “network of today” and the long term goal for the “network of tomorrow” is around 50 Mbps in urban areas. This is not good enough. You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much bandwidth. There are places in the world where the “network of today” is already 100 Mbps, their network of tomorrow will be home gigabit; the UK will look like a cart track next to a motorway. And while I’m on the topic of broadband, the report’s fixation with speed alone as the measurement of performance is wrong, latency, contention and capacity will be critical issues too especially for interactive applications such as voice, telepresence and gaming.

Wireless. It looks as if the UK will be a good place to be wireless. “Digital Britain” commits the government to releasing more spectrum, rationalising and re-farming old 2G spectrum, and implementing a rapid transition to universal 3G and eventually LTE. It’s amazing that a country as small as the UK still has flakey 3G coverage isn’t it? The 3G licenses will become perpetual to encourage network investment (but the operators will have to pay for the privilege). There are also likely to be some big spectrum auctions in the UK next year which could open up the market to new wireless providers. Current network operators may not like some of the details in the report, but the overall goal of providing more spectrum and more rationally shared spectrum is a good one.

Who’s complaining? Unsurprisingly the media industry feels that the report’s proposals for controlling media piracy don’t go far enough, but I sometimes suspect they feel that anything short of decapitation doesn’t go far enough. The current proposals will require ISPs to notify offenders, identify them to courts if requested, and to apply sanctions such as bandwidth limits. To me that seems pretty balanced. However there’s an interesting unstated issue here, which is that to conform to the regulations ISPs will have to know who you are. Does this imply the end of pre-pay data contracts? How would it work with WiFi hotspots where you buy an anonymous voucher?

Just plain weird. The report makes an interesting proposal to support the UK computer games industry, it suggests we should: “encourage the production of culturally significant video games that may otherwise not be made in the UK”. What do they expect? “Gears of Cricket”, or “Grand Theft Croquet”?

Digital public services. The report suggests the government should define 2012 as the date to start a digital switchover of selected public services. It looks as if this means you will only be able to access some public services digitally, for example tax returns and electoral roll registration. This really concerns me. I’m an unashamed digital addict but what happens to the digital refusers? The government’s own figures show that 43% of the people who don’t have home internet access don’t want it. Forcing the internet on people as the only way to submit tax returns or register for an election seems very dangerous. I don’t understand people who refuse technology but I support their right to do so.

There’s a lot more interesting stuff in the report, if you’re a UK citizen it’s worth reading because its proposals will define our digital future in so many ways.