COLUMN-UK broadband report evades superfast debate: Eric Auchard

By Eric Auchard

LONDON, June 17 (Reuters) - As you might expect from a report showily entitled "Digital Britain," the reworking of communications policy released by the UK government this week is a carefully crafted mix of politics and marketing that dodges the tougher issues it purports to address.

The government's plan to improve the country's electronic highways does little to free up investment in the truly high-speed networks that are vital to global competitiveness. This is a problem only communications companies and investors can solve. But government has a role in encouraging a competitive marketplace to get the job done.

Newspaper headlines miss the point when they zero in on the trivial 50 pence a month tax the government plan wants to be added to monthly fixed line phone bills. This would raise an estimated 150 million to 175 million pounds a year for a next-generation broadband fund that network operators could use to reach homes without basic broadband Internet access.

The report spends much of its 245 pages spelling out how to ensure Internet access at paltry speeds of around 2 million bits per second to the remaining 2.75 million homes who do not already have access to broadband.

Two megabits are barely adequate for a single user to download music and videos at reasonable speeds, let alone several users in a household doing multiple activities online. The majority of Britons already have access to faster than 2 megabit speed broadband.

Far from an example of government overreach, the Digital Britain plan is hardly ambitious enough. The discussion focuses only on millions, when billions of pounds are required to achieve the goal of meaningfully fast broadband, which typically is defined as speeds of 50 to 100 megabits.

Digital Britain puts forward 2017 -- eight years out -- as a date by which superfast, so-called "fibre to the curb" broadband could reach 90 percent of UK homes. The plan elected not to advocate the more ambitious technology known as fibre to the home, which promises speeds of 100 megabits a second.

The government initiative invokes the threat of Britain falling behind in global economic terms if it fails to invest in superfast broadband. Countries around the Pacific Rim, the United States and Germany, Finland, France have adopted national policies to advance superfast broadband access.