LONDON, U.K. -- The government of the United Kingdom has so far committed around GBP1.2 billion in public funding to help make fixed line superfast broadband speeds of 25 Megabits/sec available to 95% of the country by 2017. But a new web-based ISPreview.co.uk survey of 2200 Internet users has found that 67.2% of respondents would like even more state aid to be spent on improving the service.
The survey found that 19.1% of UK respondents would be willing invest an extra GBP10bn to GBP15bn or more of state aid funding into improving national broadband quality, which might just be enough to deliver an ultrafast (100-1000Mbps+) capable fibre optic FTTH/P network to the majority of homes and businesses. Meanwhile a third (32.6%) said they wouldn't spend any extra public money.
If you ran the country, how much extra public money would you put into improving broadband?
* None! - 32.6%
* GBP2-5bn - 21.8%
* GBP10-15bn+ - 19.1%
* GBP5-10bn - 13.5%
* Up to around gbp1bn - 12.8%
The survey then asked how long the respondents thought it would be before they truly "NEED" ultrafast broadband speeds of 100Mbps and 46% said "now!", another 21% expected to wait for 2-3 years, while 14% felt it would be more like 6 years+, 13% voted for 4-5 years and only 7% said 1 year.
"Clearly more than half of the respondents don't mind waiting a few more years for 100Mbps+ broadband speeds to become a reality," said ISPreview.co.uk's Founder, Mark Jackson. "At the same time it's interesting to note that nearly everybody does eventually expect 100Mbps+ to be a future requirement and this appears to support the wider call for investment to be boosted beyond the current levels. But at present there aren't many Internet services that could take full advantage of such speeds."
"Meanwhile the Government are only aiming for speeds of 'greater than 24Mbps', although we shouldn't assume that development will stop at the end of the BDUK project. BT are already exploring new technologies like Vectoring, G.Fast, FTTdp and Virgin Media are starting to look towards DOCSIS3.1. Solutions like this could, in a few years’ time, potentially boost service speeds well beyond the current target and probably without recourse to further public funding. But the real challenge will still be with ensuring that 100% can access superfast speeds," concluded Mark Jackson.
