Britain’s need for broadband speed

[Commentary] Since coming to office in 2010, David Cameron has striven to be Britain’s prime minister for broadband.

A technophile whose admiration for Silicon Valley is well known, he has extolled the virtues of faster connectivity as a means of reviving the UK’s industrial fortunes and bringing more tourists to the country’s shores. Targets have been set to wire up the UK, eliminate so-called “not spots” and increase average download speeds. During the past four years, the coalition has earmarked more than £1.3bn of public money for the construction of broadband networks and mobile infrastructure in digitally excluded areas. Cameron is right to harp on about the importance of “bringing China to Cardiff, Brazil to Bristol and the Emirates to Edinburgh”. Not least, this is an important mission if the coalition is to rebalance the British economy away from its pre-crash bias towards the London and the south east and financial services.

But the UK tech revolution is a work in progress. Like the nation’s broadband speeds themselves, it needs to move faster.