Oxford Media Convention (2)
26 January 2010
One of the liveliest of the six seminars at this year's Oxford Media Convention was that entitled "Our digital future: can Britain's digital infrastructure compete?" The seminar was chaired by Damian Tambini in his capacity as a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics, but Damian is also a member of the Communicatons Consumer Panel. One of the five seminar panellists was Anna Bradley who is Chair of the Communications Consumer Panel.
The debate was started by Kip Meek who was participating in his capacity as Chair of Ingenious Consulting but inevitably he drew on the work of the Broadband Stakeholder Group which he also chairs. He was doubtful of the value of the Government pursuing a universal broadband commitment of 2 Mbit/s ("I'm agnostic on the merits of universality") and sceptical about the need at this stage for public intervention in the roll-out of next generation broadband ("I have a hunch that it is premature to have targets").
Anna supported the notion of a universal broadband commitment and specifically addressed the questions:
1) What is the universal broadband commitment for?
2) Will the commitment ensure that everyone has 2 Mbit/s by 2012?
3) Will 2 Mbit/s be enough?
4) Will this solve the digital divide?