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It's Digital Britain today — your predictions, please!
16 Jun 2009 | 09.17 Europe/London
Today's the day (rumours abound that there may be a slight delay while a BBC Worldwide/Channel 4 Deal is finalised) that Lord Carter's Digital Britain report comes out. Hurrah, about bloody time too, etc etc. We've been speculating about what's going to be in there and, while not quite going so far as printing Digital Britain Bingo gamesheets to play in the office, this is what we predict.
- Universal Service at 2 Mbits/s link speed. Not too much detail on how to get us there, however. Expect BT's I-Plate to get a mention.
- Technology agnostic, with a working group to define how it is planned, delivered and paid for.
- No definition of "universal" or of contention ratio / likely peak-time performance.
- Social security broadband to avoid leaving people behind.
- Digital Rights / Piracy prevention body to work with ISPs on graduated enforcement by restricting connection rate or P2P data rate.
- Mobile spectrum dilemma, with both O2 and Vodafone loath to give up the 900 MHz spectrum. We predict the report will fudge it today and sort it out at a later date.
- Rights body with ISPs and right holders sharing the table. Details will be nebulous.
- The Beeb's licence fee to be partially shared amongst other public service broadcasters, ie the ITV regional news.
The Universal Service will actually be "up to" 2mbit when you check the small print, and the 128kbit speed that users actually get because of distance and contention will meet the targets.
16 Jun 2009 | 12.03 Europe/London
"The Universal Service will actually be “up to” 2mbit when you check the small print" - I don't think it will, I think it will be a 2M link speed but as you say a contended service. If users get 128k from a pants ISP they know what the remedy is. There comes a time when picking Tiscali because it's cheap has to be seen for the error it may be.
16 Jun 2009 | 15.05 Europe/London