Ideas for electability: High speed internet

By Josh Blacker / @jkblacker

There’s an incredibly nerdy little series on BBC Four at the moment, looking at the National Grid and how it was constructed. The first episode, ‘Wiring the Nation‘ describes how a fragmented market of suppliers in the early days of electricity meant patchy coverage and high prices. Only by nationalising and investing public money – a decision taken by a Conservative PM – did we see the complete coverage of the nation.

Today, I see high-speed internet as fundamental to our future lives and economy as electricity was fundamental to our progress in the 20th Century.

And yet again we have something of a confusing market. Cable internet is the sole domain of Virgin Media, and internet via your telephone line is so confusing I still haven’t got my head round it. Moving into my new flat, I had to set up a BT line – paying BT to to pay BT Openreach to do so – and then get my separate broadband provider to activate my internet connection. It doesn’t strike me as an efficient system, and it’s tied into the telephone infrastructure and the technology that is based on.

BT and Virgin are now beginning to roll out ‘superfast’ broadband in some areas, which the government supports. The problem is, these roll-outs are slow, concentrated on large population areas (good luck Wales), and expensive. Virgin’s fastest broadband will cost a whopping £45 a month, for instance – keeping it well out of the reach of most people, particularly during a period of damaging cuts.

The government’s target for broadband penetration sits at a measly 2Mbps for all, by 2015. To Labour’s credit, we set the target at 2012 – but it is still hopelessly poor. South Korea’s aspiration is to wire up everyone to 100Mbps, 50 times faster than we will apparently be happy with.

I say, let’s raise our aspirations. Let’s not allow a fragmented private sector take things slowly, ignoring rural populations who will benefit most from increased connectivity. Let’s look to Britain’s future as a prosperous nation, and invest public money to ensure success.

While private profit is the goal, some areas will simply be ignored, and some technological barriers too expensive to overcome. If we are the optimists now, let’s show it.