In UK, Lords water down push for minimum broadband speed

Peers have dropped a demand for a minimum broadband speed of 30 megabits per second to be a legal requirement, as the Digital Economy Bill is rushed through parliament before the general election.

The government has pushed for a “universal service obligation” to be part of the legislation, with a benchmark minimum speed of 10Mbps — far lower than the “superfast” level the House of Lords had been demanding. The government has also dropped a 2020 deadline for that threshold to be introduced. The Lords amended the bill in February to raise the minimum obligatory speed to 30Mbps, saying 10Mbps would “unfit for usage in a very short time”. But both the government and Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, have argued that the universal service obligation should be raised over time and introduced by secondary legislation when deemed appropriate.