Digital Britain unconferences

The state of the broadband nation here in the UK is now approaching dire. Despite the spin and advertising millions, the reality on the ground is that many suffer impoverished braodband connections, and there is little chance of the telcos providing broadband appropriate for the 21st century (FTTH) before the 2012 Olympics to anyone other than a handful of foreign athletes and journalists.

Britain is getting left behind in the broadband race. We seem unable to force private companies to act for the common good in providing broadband to the masses, or even acknowledge the problem, and swathes of the country, especially rural areas, are still unable to get anything close to what other nations would call broadband, even in 2009.

FTTH is being sidelined for yet another interim technology, fibre to the copper/cabinet or FTTC, which will no more provide suitable communications infrastructure for this nation than the asymmetrical connectivity provided to date, (ADSL) and labelled (mistakenly) and (mis)sold as "broadband".

The Carter Report on Digital Britain has been through public review after the recent publication of the interim report, the Digital Britain Summit has been held to inform and enlighten the lucky few who got a seat in the British Library or who could access the online video stream of current thinking, whilst awaiting the publication of the full Digital Britain Report in May.

The problem is though that Joe Public is fed up with reports and summits, policy and regulation, pilots and trials, all of which generally cost a fortune to us the taxpayers and frequently achieve nothing except backwards movement down the FTTH or true broadband path.

The Digital Britain Twitter backchannel during the Summit was alive with pain, frustration, exasperation as well as innovative ideas, positivity for community action, broadband expertise, FTTH and telco knowledge, and much more.

For the latter half of the Digital Britain conference, there was at least a factor of 10 higher attendees on the Twitter #digitalbritain channel than in the venue. And probably far more due to Stephen Fry's attendance and involvement.

In response to that, it was inevitable that the Digital Britain unconference would be organised by people who are far more digitally aware than many at policy and decision making level. Those people will ignore the Digital Britain unconferences at their peril, be they in government, the civil service or telcos.

There are far too many people for whom this issue can be life or death:

* personally, because of the lack of telemedicine
* to their businesses, because they are unable to communicate with or participate in the global economy and in too many cases with the local economy
* to their communities, who are becoming increasingly cut off and isolated from the internet-driven world because of the lack of broadband
* to their familes as arguments and suffering occur due to lack of access for schooling, leisure, work opportunities
* to the environment as we continue to be unable to fully implement teleworking or reduce enviro-impact through the adoption of green technologies or reduced energy consumption which FTTH brings

The Digital Britain unconference idea is a natural reaction to the situation which is being foced on the consumers, citizens and businesses of the UK. It highlights what many of us are saying that BROADBAND IS VITAL.

Wherever you are in Britain, please attend one of the broadband unconferences, either in person or online through the Digital Britain Unconference Twitter channel, and promote these events as widely as possible.

Read more!