[News] High-Speed Broadband Internet to Become a Legal Right for UK Citizens by 2020

https://www.techpowerup.com/239864/h...tizens-by-2020

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The Government has confirmed that universal high speed broadband will be delivered by a regulatory Universal Service Obligation (USO), giving everyone in the UK access to speeds of at least 10 Mbps by 2020. This is the speed that Ofcom, the independent regulator, says is needed to meet the requirements of an average family. After careful consideration the government has decided that regulation is the best way of making sure everyone in the UK can get a decent broadband connection of at least 10 Mbps as soon as possible.

Following the creation of new powers when the Government passed the Digital Economy Act 2017, we launched our consultation on the design of the regulatory USO in the summer. The Government will now set out the design for a legal right to high speed broadband in secondary legislation early next year, alongside our detailed response to the consultation.

Ofcom's implementation is expected to take two years from when we lay secondary legislation, meeting the Government's commitment of giving everyone access to high speed broadband by 2020.

In the summer, we received a proposal from BT to deliver universal broadband through a voluntary agreement. We welcomed BT's proposal and have considered this in detail alongside a regulatory approach. We did not feel the proposal was strong enough for us to take the regulatory USO off the table, and have therefore decided not to pursue BT's proposal in favor of providing a legal right to broadband.

The government believes that only a regulatory USO offers sufficient certainty and the legal enforceability that is required to ensure high speed broadband access for the whole of the UK by 2020. However, we welcome BT's continued investment to deliver broadband to all parts of the UK.

Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said:
"We know how important broadband is to homes and businesses and we want everyone to benefit from a fast and reliable connection. We are grateful to BT for their proposal but have decided that only a regulatory approach will make high speed broadband a reality for everyone in the UK, regardless of where they live or work."

"This is all part of our work on ensuring that Britain's telecoms infrastructure is fit for the future and will continue to deliver the connectivity that consumers need in the digital age."

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This is a surprise, I thought that most UK houses had some kind of high speed internet already, If not all.

I guess it depends what 'high speed' is classes as, surely that depends on the year, technology etc.

Go to rural Devon or Cornwall and you will find that a lot of households have no broadband at all or are on under 2Mbps ADSL lines. Obviously people should realize that if they build their houses in remote, hard to get location, few miles off bigger communities, then they will be low on priority list for new connections.
Anyway, compared to the rest of Europe, UK is quite a bit behind when comes to fast broadband adaptation, only exception being Germany, who are even worse!

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Originally Posted by Lightman

Go to rural Devon or Cornwall and you will find that a lot of households have no broadband at all or are on under 2Mbps ADSL lines.

Anyway, compared to the rest of Europe, UK is quite a bit behind when comes to fast broadband adaptation, only exception being Germany, who are even worse!

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Compared to here in Australia, you have a far better communications system. Just have a look at our NBN $70 Billion dollar wastage on what NOT to build for the future yet most will have about 12Mbps connections.

Although I have lived for years with 2Mbps speeds I guess that is what it's like living in the 3rd World these days, lucky to have a connection at all and if so it will be at the lowest speeds possible.

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Originally Posted by docwhom

Compared to here in Australia, you have a far better communications system. Just have a look at our NBN $70 Billion dollar wastage on what NOT to build for the future yet most will have about 12Mbps connections.

Although I have lived for years with 2Mbps speeds I guess that is what it's like living in the 3rd World these days, lucky to have a connection at all and if so it will be at the lowest speeds possible.

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Yeah, friend of mine lives in Sydney and even there (outskirts) he only gets around 15mbps. I'm quite happy with my 80/20 mbps but whenever I go to my family home in very rural Poland (under 100 people village in a 3600 people local council) and use 1Gbps/100Mbps fibre connection I'm wishing I could have it at home and at it's $26 pm price :) Funny thing is, my home village had no telephone infrastructure till 1996 and I was first local ISP for about 100 people sharing 1Mbps synchronous skeleton connection.