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Stephen Timms MPBroadband in the Regions |
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| I am delighted to be here today and I'd like to thank our hosts, Computing Magazine and IQPC for organising this event.
When the Prime Minister a month ago asked me to take on this job, he emphasised the importance that he attaches to the development of broadband and e-commerce because for the signifiance for the economy as a whole. That is a view which I have always shared and this is an area which I have always found fascinating. Indeed I rummaged around in my attic on Monday evening to dig out the report on broadband which I wrote in 1987 and to compare what I thought then with what has happened since. It was a study which I hugely enjoyed carrying out and I do bring to my new role a high level both of enthusiasm for the potential of broadband, and of commitment to making a success of it in the UK. So much has happened in the past 15 years since that report was published. Just in the past five years, we have made a very substantial investment in imparting ICT skills in schools. And the evidence is that it is working. In April as schools minister I was visiting a primary school in Derby. They showed me their ICT suite which they said was used by all the children in the school, but they said they had had a problem recently because some of the four year olds had been using these PCs to hack into the school's administrative system and had started to change some of the data which wasn't supposed to be changed. I think perhaps they were altering some of the timetable details! At any rate, there is no doubt that we are raising a generation of digital citizens who are going to make very heavy demands on networks, and I am certain that that will be one of the drivers for the dramatic growth of broadband that we csn anticipate over the next few years. The Broadband Stakeholder Group uses the analogy that broadband is like a journey, and that is, I believe, a helpful way of looking at what is happening. The journey began with narrowband. It moved through to unmetered dial-up and towards today's broadband products. And now it continues with more sophisticated services requiring higher bandwidth. State of Play We were slower to start with broadband in the UK than elsewhere, but we are now starting to see rapid progress. We have come a long way. And I pay tribute to my predecessors Douglas Alexander, now the e-Government minister in the Cabinet Office - and before him, to Patricia Hewitt, now the Secretary of State - for their achievements. And for laying the foundations for the growth we are now seeing. The UK is one of the most connected economies in the world. Levels of Internet use. Levels of e-Commerce. Levels of affordability for narrowband – all of them are amongst the world's highest. And we want that leadership to be repeated for broadband too. Our goal is to develop a market that is both extensive and competitive. Its been my clear impression in the past month that there is a new and justified optimism around broadband in Britain. Two-thirds of the population can access a mainstream broadband service, and that proportion is rising. The number of broadband connections has exceeded 600,000. Oftel reports that there are 20,000 new broadband connections every week, so we are on track to reach a million comfortably by the end of the year. The limits of availability are being pushed back by emerging technologies – like satellite and wireless. And we need the limits to be pushed back further in the months ahead. Oftel research shows that UK broadband prices are now among the most competitive in the world. Six months ago, UK DSL prices were the most expensive in the G7 – now they're amongst the cheapest. And there is no doubt that this year's dramatic price cuts have been a key driver for the growth we are seeing at present. The market is highly competitive – more competitive than many other countries with higher levels of take-up. 40% of users have a choice of infrastructure technology. We have waited a long time in the UK to see the benefits of that infrastructure competition, but I believe that with broadband we are now doing so in a very significant way, and that augurs well for the future too. Challenges But with each of these successes comes a challenge. For both government and those in the industry. That's why we've always worked closely with those at the industry's heart. In particular, with the Broadband Stakeholder Group. The Group was set up in April last year by Patricia Hewitt as a critical, knowledgeable friend to government. It has a mandate to report to government every six months. It presented its first set of recommendations to Douglas Alexander in December - and has presented its second report to me today. Keith Todd, the Chairman of the Stakeholder Group, will be speaking to the Conference later and I'd like to thank Keith – and the Stakeholder Group Executive and its Secretariat for all their hard work in pulling this report together and for the very important contribution they are making to creating the right environment for broadband. This latest report contains a full update on the Stakeholder Group's activities over the last six months. And it highlights their reflections on the challenges ahead of us. It is a well considered and thought-provoking piece of work. And, like its predecessor, I believe it will have considerable influence in shaping my thinking on the right way forward, and policy thinking across government. A full copy can be found on the Broadband Stakeholder Group's web site, and Keith will say more about it in his speech. Let me just respond to one of the key issues that the report focuses on: the rural-urban broadband divide. The idea of the digital divide is not a new one. I was intrigued, among the reading material presented to me on my arrival at the Department of Trade and Industry, to come across some remarks of the American Internet pioneer JCR Licklider which date back to 1968. He wrote a remarkably prescient article about the internet or what he called the interconnected electronic network. In it he said this: "For society, the impact will be good or bad, depending mainly on the question: Will 'to be online' be a privilege or a right?" Licklider believed the interconnected electronic network could and should be "a boon to mankind… beyond measure", as he put it. But the resolution of the question – would it be a privilege or a right – would determine whether that promise was achieved. Reading that a couple of weeks ago it struck me as remarkably far-sighted – or maybe the truth is that once the concept of being online has been grasped then the issue of the digital divide is a fairly obvious one. Either way, the concern which Licklider expressed is a serious concern which occupies us still, three and a half decades later. There are still too many people – in rural and remote parts of the country – who can't access an affordable and reliable broadband service. And what's worse, in some cases – due to technological and market constraints – they have no realistic prospect of getting affordable broadband in the near future. This is unacceptable, it does threaten the prospects for broadband to be a boon both to our economy and to our society, and it presents a major challenge to policy makers and to industry alike. We all need to work to address it. Current Strategy - £30m Let me first give a reminder of how we've begun to address the problem, in a couple of ways. First we have established a £30 million fund for Regional Development Agencies and the Devolved Administrations. This is a fund established by my Department whose purpose is to inspire and to kindle innovative ways of extending broadband networks. We want it to enable the extension of networks to parts of the country where they would not otherwise be commercially viable. And I am very encouraged by the innovative projects which the fund is making possible. There is, for example, the Broadband Brokerage - a pilot scheme in the East of England, which allows companies and public sector bodies to register their interest in broadband, and brokers for them an aggregated solution. Another is the RABBIT project – the remote area broadband inclusion trial. Several regions will be offering small and medium sized enterprises the chance for substantial discounts on the cost of broadband connections which had previously been too expensive. We know there are a huge number of companies interested in broadband - this will allow some of them to take their first steps. A third example is Broadbanding Buckfastleigh – introducing Buckfastleigh in Devon to the benefits of broadband by linking up the school, the health centre, the town hall and library and establishing a community access centre. All these projects are very valuable in themselves, and we see them also as developing approaches and solutions which can then be adopted more widely around the country to ensure that rural areas do not lag behind on broadband connectivity. Current strategy – public sector investment But there is a wider and much more substantial contribution which we shall be making in Government to the roll out of broadband. The public sector as a user will be a major driver for the introduction of broadband services up and down the country. The Government is making an unprecedented investment in improving public services. In education, for example, where I was a Minister until last month, capital investment more than trebled between 1997 and 2001, and it will have increased by half as much again by next year. We are recognising right across Government that the modern, high quality public services to which we are committed will require the use of modern communications networks. So in key public services increasingly, not just in education but across the board, we are building broadband into our planning for the future. In the health service: from next April, following the Chancellor's budget announcements, we will have funding in place for a new NHS infrastructure. It will provides network access of 128 kilobits per second or greater to every doctor and to all support staff, and bandwidth of at least 2 Megabits per second across NHSnet gateways. In education: by the end of April, 16% of schools in England had a broadband internet connection. That proportion is now rising rapidly and is expected to reach some 30% by the end of August. In local government: nearly £50m of funding was announced recently for 64 partnership projects aimed at helping deliver better services online. A number of these projects are based on broadband services. They build on the work councils are currently undertaking to make the most of new technology in providing better quality and more accessible services to people. Around a quarter of public libraries have broadband access today. And, of course, when the Chancellor makes his spending review announcements next month, we will have a clearer picture of the investment in broadband across the whole of public services, to set alongside the picture which we already have for the health service. New Policy – Regional Broadband Unit I want to make sure we make the most of that investment in the use of broadband by public services. I want to make sure that the public services themselves derive the greatest possible benefit from that investment, in improving what they deliver to the public. I want to make sure that that has the greatest possible benefit in boosting the availability of broadband to other users, outside the public sector. And I want to make sure that where we have really excellent examples of broadband being used effectively and imaginatively by public services, that that good practice is made known as widely as possible. And so we are taking a further step in our broadband strategy. Its aim is to encourage the development of broadband services in the regions, with the aim of addressing the rural-urban broadband divide. It will strengthen the work of my department, of the regional development agencies and devolved administrations, of the Office for Government Commerce which is dedicated to improving public sector procurement, and it will be supported by the Office of the e-Envoy. I am announcing today a new Regional Broadband Unit which will open for business in the autumn. It will work closely with the regional development agencies, and its purpose will be to stimulate economic development and enhance the delivery of public services through extending broadband services - at the regional and local level. We are discussing with the Devolved Administrations also the detail of how the new unit will support their current strategies. The Regional Broadband Unit will bring together a new team in the Office for Government Commerce, to co-ordinate public sector broadband procurement, with a new DTI co-ordinated team of regional broadband advisors. The regional advisors in my Department will have the aim of increasing both the availability and the take-up of broadband in the regions. It will:
The new team in the Office for Government Commerce will work alongside it to enable smarter public sector broadband procurement. It will offer direct procurement support to purchasing authorities – to assist them with broadband projects. I am also pleased to announce today that the Office for Government Commerce intends to negotiate broadband framework contracts with suppliers, enabling public sector users to procure broadband services more quickly, more simply and more efficiently, increasing value for money. In particular, a broadband catalogue will be established to enable contracting authorities to call-off commodity broadband services such as DSL, cable and satellite without having to negotiate terms and conditions for each separate purchase. After consulting with suppliers and users, the Office for Government Commerce will advertise next month for potential suppliers. These steps are in direct response to the call by the Prime Minister in November last year. That was when he asked the Office of Government Commerce to look at whether there is more that can be done to help government departments and others buy broadband more effectively. All of this constitutes a significant boost on the journey towards Broadband Britain –the teams of regional advisors; the committed support and focus of the Regional Development Agencies; the OGC team providing procurement advice; and the negotiation of framework contracts. These activities will not be undertaken in isolation from each other. The Regional Broadband Unit will drive change across the public sector and ensure that the plans of different parts of government are visible to all, including suppliers, and are co-ordinated effectively. Bringing both efforts together will maximise the impact we will make and what we can achieve for wider broadband availability. It will allow us to use public sector activity in broadband services as a catalyst for private sector investment, bringing together public and private demand to stimulate the market for both networks and applications. It makes me feel quite nostalgic looking back on my 15 year old report on broadband. "Broadband is no longer just a pipedream", I said then argually somewhat prematurely. Some things in the report were clearly mistaken – it said a great deal, for example, about fibre in the local loop but barely mentioned DSL. On the other hand, my prediction of the scale of adoption of broadband wasn't that far out – I projected that around eight million homes and one in six business sites across the UK, US, France and Germany would be equipped with integrated broadband access by 2000. It will in fact have taken somewhat longer than that, but not that much. I also projected that broadband take up in the US and France would develop a good deal faster than in the UK, as until now it certainly has. But, increasingly, broadband will have a central importance in boosting our productivity and our economic growth. It will be driven by hard-edged market demand. It will make a difference to the way we communicate and to what we communicate. Extending opportunities and raising standards in our education system, and improving our health service. Much more an essential than an optional extra. And I am looking forward immensely to working alongside everybody in this industry over the coming months towards the ambition which all of us share, of making a success of broadband in Britain, for a stronger economy and a stronger society, for the benefit of every one of us. Thank you. |
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Other speeches by Stephen Timms MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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