Communications: Digital Britain

My Lords, I turn first to the universal service commitment because this was what I would call a point of confusion in an earlier discussion. We have stated that we wish to establish a floor of provision, not a ceiling. It is already the case that in certain parts of Britain, rates of up to 50 megabits are available. The noble Lord should not take from what we are recommending any indication that we are trying to cap the market; far from it. We are trying to suggest that, as with the water supply, there should be a basic level of quality and that that basic level should be universally available. Why have we set it at the notional rate of 2 megabits? We have done so because in today’s world, despite its limitations, two megabits is a rate at which one can get resilient data and video services. However, in no way, shape or form are we suggesting that it is the ceiling of our ambition, because it is not. They are quite separate things. On the noble Lord’s point about capacity, which is largely a function of how networks interconnect in their design, we recognise absolutely that network capacity is an issue. It will be a central part of our analysis of next-generation networks because they are the way to resolve the issue; namely, to put into the middle or core of the network more capacity for the services he has described. British Telecom has announced that it is going to deploy some new fibre optic cables, and I am certain that the technology it will deploy for this will be of the new variety described by the noble Lord. We also say elsewhere in the report that we shall ask for an examination of the case for opening up access to cabling ducts and other ways of distributing the fibre optics so that it is not always necessary to dig holes in the ground; rather it can be done through access to the existing infrastructure, whether it be current telecoms infrastructure or that of alternative utilities.