Beyond Broadband: How Our Communities Can Get The Digital Networks They Need is the new guide from the Independent Networks Cooperative Association (INCA) designed to provide practical guidance to communities seeking to meet their own needs with respect to next generation digital networks.
From the Foreword to Beyond Broadband:
Broadband has transformed the way that many of us live, work and play. In the words of the Digital Britain report: “We are at a tipping point in relation to the online world. It is moving from conferring advantage on those who are in it to conferring active disadvantage on those who are without.”
Yet many people live in parts of the UK where broadband still isn’t available or cannot deliver the performance they need to become fully engaged online. And already many countries are moving on to the next level – broadband over optical fibre – to enable video-rich applications and entertainment, to facilitate small businesses and home working, and to support multiple users in each household.
The UK has been slow to deploy next-generation access and fibre-to-the-home. As a country we do not feature in the FTTH Rankings – a league table of nations where at least 1% of households subscribe to broadband over fibre connections. Indeed, analysts estimate that the UK lags behind the leading fibre nations like Japan and Sweden by at least five years.