Broadband could prove to be a massive catalyst for economic growth, according to the latest pie-in-the-sky crystal ball gazing from Gartner Dataquest.

Forget the broadband currently on offer - Gartner's talking about broadband with speeds starting from an eye-watering 10Mbps.

Part of that growth would be created by the development of a new super-fast network, which would demand "continuous upgrade of communications equipment".

In turn, this investment would drive years of growth in user devices as well as networking hardware, says Gartner - something that would be warmly welcomed in a depressed technology sector.

However, there is a snag.

Gartner reckons delivery of true broadband services to the home over the "last 200 metres" poses a sizeable bottleneck to achieving such a massive economic shot in the arm.

And while there are "substantial rewards with a 'true' broadband environment", there are also risks, says Gartner soberly.

The risks, to name but a few, would be the astronomic costs of such a massive undertaking and the time (bloody years, frankly) it would take to deploy such a network - that's assuming the project won the backing of absolutely everyone.

Said Kathie Hackler of Gartner Dataquest: "The participants in today's economic activities cannot tolerate slow, unsophisticated narrowband communications without suffering a loss of productivity, just as participants of yesterday's industrial age economic activities benefited considerably by the availability of even a modicum of communications capability."

You can read more of Gartner's musings of what's possible, but not probable, in its report Telecom Regulation Has Failed: Now What?. ®