Government asks for 2Mbps, Virgin offers 200Mbps

First, let’s forget those who don’t want broadband for a second and consider only those who have and use broadband services.

I’ll keep this short. How can the UK Government possibly think that asking for 2Mbps in it’s preliminary Digital Britain report is anywhere near acceptable?

Virgin, theoretically, can achieve 200Mbps with their fibre (aka FTTC) network. Though the actual speed is unlikely to be that high in reality, they do quote a minimum of 100Mbps downstream.

They’re still likely to end up beating BT to it in any case, completing their rollout by 2012.

It makes the Government look like a bunch of uneducated fools touting 2Mbps as the speed to have whereas thousands (if not millions) of homes already have twice that and will potentially, in the next 3 years have one hundred times that speed at their fingertips.

The Government is so far behind the curve it’s infuriating. How can we, as a country, possibly be innovative enough to compete on the world stage with that kind of attitude from Government.

So here’s my request to the folks in Whitehall: Stop spending money on a report that is about two years out of date before actually being fully produced and instead spend it incentivising companies like BT and Virgin to speed up their rollout.

I’m moving to San Francisco if you don’t.