UK urged to invest in fibre networks

On the day that the UK celebrated its one millionth broadband connection the boss of a Swedish company called on the British Government to start thinking about the national roll-out of fibre for next generation broadband services.

Martin Thunman, CEO of PacketFront, said there were very few initiatives or projects in the UK concerning the creation of fibre networks to the home or businesses compared to other parts of the world.

He described today's obsession with xDSL and cable broadband services as myopic claiming that the UK is only focusing on the short term.

Said Mr Thunman: "The infrastructure in place today is not a long-term solution. We need to start talking about building fibre networks.

"In the UK, 'broadband' is commonly used to refer to any 'always-on' communications technology that operates faster than 1Mbps – even the heavily promoted ADSL only goes up to 2Mbps.

"PacketFront argues that this type of bandwidth is totally inadequate for achieving the technological leadership posited by 'Broadband Britain'."

Thunman called on central and regional Government to fund the roll-out of fibre networks and warned that unless the UK took this seriously, it would hit a ceiling and be left behind in the information revolution.

A spokeswoman for the Government was less than enthusiastic about the idea of such investment claiming that the UK needs to concentrate on the here and now, and focus on bringing broadband to the mass market.

She told The Register said: "We look at broadband as a journey. As the market matures we'll see where it goes. Who can say that in ten years time fibre networks will be the way to go?

PacketFront makes equipment and develops solutions which are used in fibre networks. ®