Lord Carter Defends 2Mb Broadband Target

Lord Carter has for the first time defended his interim Digital Britain report and in particular his decision to set a 2Mbps minimum speed target for UK broadband.

The Digital Britain report which Lord Carter introduced at the end of January has publically come under fire from critics in the industry.

Darren Waters, who writes on the BBC News dot.life blog covered this earlier this month when he said “Many in the industry were hoping that Lord Carter would drive the adoption of high speed broadband by setting a much higher speed as the minimum for everyone”.

Until now Lord Carter has remained quiet over the criticism, however, he is now defending the report stating, “Those who say that a Universal Service Obligation of 2Mbps is a ludicrously low ambition miss the point”.
Speaking at a meeting which was organised by Nesta, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, he also defended his decision to make broadband available to all households in the UK.
“There is going to be 30% of the country not covered by traditional markets and I’m not prepared to leave them behind” said Carter. “It is not an option to say that we will find a mop-up solution in 10 years time.”

The full version of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report is due to be published in May. He stated that the point of the interim report was to allow people to debate the plans and to come up with realistic solutions to the current broadband restrictions.