Stephen Carter has played down the significance of the available 100 Mbps broadband speeds currently being rolled out in continental Europe. Speaking to the Broadcasting Press Guild in London, Lord Carter, the Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting, said that while there were places around the world where faster speeds were possible, the same was true for parts of the UK. “There aren’t many places in the world that are offering 100 Mbps products symmetrically to every household in the street.”
Since his appointment in October, the former advertising executive who went onto become chief executive of NTL, and the founding chief executive of Ofcom has established an advisory board that will produce The Digital Britain Report early next year. On the agenda is the possibility of a universally available broadband service and how fast that should be. “The reason why it is important is because infrastructure lets you do things you don’t know about. It’s only when you’ve got it that you then realise what you can do. It’s fantastically democratising and it transfers power, information and control to people and is potentially transforming. I take comfort from the fact we’re a densely populated island, and if we can’t figure out how to get next generation service in an economic way, then it’s going to be tricky in Texas.”
Addressing the issue of whether broadcasters such as the BBC and Sky should compensate ISPs for putting pressure on their networks through over the top TV services, Lord Carter said he would have no aversion to graduated pricing: “If you want a car that goes from nought to sixty in six and a half seconds you pay more for one that takes 15 seconds.”
