How successful would Finland’s broadband policy be here?
September 11, 2010 in Adrian's tech blog
At the NextGen Road-show event in Edinburgh this week, Professor Michael Fourman gave a fascinating talk on the special challenges for delivering broadband in Scotland. At the heart of his work were some maps which very effectively demonstrated the impact the Finnish Government’s broadband policy might have on some of the more remote areas of Scotland as well as a GIS-based estimate of how much it might cost to deliver it.
Heavily summarised, Finland’s policy says that there should be a fibre back-haul connection within 2km of any community; and they define a community as an area containing at least 70 people per square kilometre.
I was left wondering how effective this policy might be across England and Wales, as well as Scotland. I don’t have to hand the core network details that Prof. Fourman used to calculate the costs of delivering the policy nor the time just at the moment to build the shortest-distance spanning tree model he used, so I’ve restricted myself to simply looking at where Finland’s policy might reach that the market won’t.
The map (click on it to see it life-size) depicts in green the areas which the policy would deliver a fibre to, and the black is the extent of market-led next generation broadband according to DCLG’s 65% NGA model. A first glance says “so what – doesn’t seem very impressive”. However this is where maps have the power to overstate a problem. Using the 2001 census, there would be 11,946,819 (don’t you love computer precision!) English and Welsh people who remained without NGA broadband when 65% of the UK was already enjoying it. Applying the Finnish policy reduces this figure to just 275,451 – or in other words, increases the reach of NGA from 65% to 94% of the population.
The Finnish broadband policy would reach 94% of the English and Welsh population
Of course this is academic without the costs that Prof. Fourman generated, but it is a powerful example of how the village pump model that Rory Stewart MP is advocating. So how many of these green areas are close to a Primary School, Library or GP whose existing broadband connections could be upgraded and converted into a Village Pump?
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