UK - 10 of 27 smaller cities are competing for funding for super-fast broadband

ZDnet reports that the competition for funding from a £50 million funf for "super-fast broadband" is between: Aberdeen, Brighton & Hove, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Exeter, Gloucester, Kingston upon Hull, Leicester, Londonderry/Derry, Newport, Norwich, Oxford, Perth, Peterborough, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Preston, Salford, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland, Swansea, Wolverhampton and York. Ten of the twenty-seven will selected.

Larger cities, sharing a £100 million fund are: Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester and Sheffield.

Perthshire - MSP complains of insufficient bandwidth in some rural areas for BBC iPlayer

IC Perthshire reports (from I think the Blairgowrie Advertiser) a further intervention on broadband by Murdo Fraser MSP.

Fraser again complains about "poor" broadband in eastern and highland Perthshire, claiming an adverse effect on local businesses.

The Scottish Government must understand the growing frustration from local businesses and residents in Perthshire regarding the lack of broadband connectivity, including those who live in the Amulree, Butterstone, Glenshee, Trochry, Loch Tay, Strathbraan and Strathardle areas of Perthshire.

I have spoken with many local residents and businesses and it is clear that the poor service needs to be upgraded. It is disappointing that the Scottish Government will not make Perthshire a priority area for investment as we need to see our local exchanges upgraded to provide faster and more reliable broadband.

As is usual in such complaints there are only very vague indications of the real problems in terms of speeds, quality of service or lack of availability, with a claim that in some areas the BBC iPlayer does not work.

Inevitably, neither the costs of any infrastructural improvements nor the economic benefits if they were made are indicated.

The response of the Salmond Administration was to restate its existing policy.

England - DEFRA opens bids from £20 million fund for rural areas

V3 reports that the government has invited remoter parts of England to apply for a share of a £20 million Rural Community Broadband Fund (RCBF) run by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). This is intended to help the rollout of superfast broadband services.

Eligible costs include: Capital works; Facilitation and technical support costs; other service establishment costs, but not ongoing maintenance costs.

See also the dedicated DEFRA website.

Ireland - Towards a national broadband strategy, government is consulting on report with 42 recommendations

The Government of Ireland has published the Report of the Next Generation Broadband Taskforce. There is a consultation until the end of May on best to facilitate the provision of high speed broadband. According to the suppliers, more than 50 per cent of Ireland's population would have access to at least 70 Mbps by 2015. The report has 42 recommendations. For example, a stumbling block is access to existing fibre infrastructure – ducts run alongside motorways and co-operation with local authorities in rolling out infrastructure. The Minister, Pat Rabbitte, said every part of Ireland will have broadband by 2013 and will meet EU targets of high-speed broadband for every citizen by 2020. The Taskforce was a collaborative approach between industry and the Departmental of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources aimed at assisting the Government to develop an informed and ambitious National Broadband Plan to achieve “faster broadband to more places as soon as possible”. The Taskforce was chaired by the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Mr. Pat Rabbitte T.D., supported by Minister of State, Mr. Fergus O’Dowd T.D., with the the CEOs of the six main electronic communications network operators: BT, Eircom/Meteor, Hutchison 3G Ireland (3), Telefonica O2, UPC & Vodafone. The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), the Telecommunications and Internet Federation (TIF) and Forfás were observers. Executive Summary and Full Report

UK - Ranked 16th for download speed with little concern by operators to go for fibre to the home

The Guardian, picking up on work by Akamai, notes that the UK is heading for the slow lane of broadband.

The internet is a bigger part of the British economy than education, healthcare or construction. Britons generate more money online than any other G20 nation. But when it comes to high-speed broadband, the country is falling behind.

Akamai rated the UK's average download speed as only ranked 16th in Europe.

Previous evidence is that speeds in Scotland are below the UK average.

BT's strategy head, Sean Williams is quoted as saying:

Eighty Mbps is more than people need ... We are not of the school that universal fibre to the premises is the solution.

TalkTalk's chief executive, Dido Harding, is quoted as saying:

I think that Britain's broadband vision needs to be about more people using broadband rather than macho claims about the speed of the technology ... The UK has got 8 million people who have never used the internet and they are often the people in society who would most benefit from it.

See the Akamai State of the Internet Report for 2011 Q4 (free, but have to register).

UK - report on the expected benefits of superfast broadband sponsored by Convergys

A report sponsored by Convergys examines the Costs and Benefits of Superfast Broadband in the UK. The authors, Paolo Dini, Claire Milne and Robert Milne, examine EXPECTATIONS in the absence of evidence, noting the need for

basic training in e-skills for everyone at work and at home.

Warning that:

the case for yet higher speeds (over 100Mbps, and in particular for the general deployment of fibre to the home) is much less clear.

OECD - Literature review on ICTs and productivity and a reports on public ICT infrastructure and standards of living

The OECD has published two reports: Measuring the Impact of Innovations in Public IT Infrastructure on the Standard of Living in OECD Economies

Advances in information technology (IT) in the first decade of the 21st century have highlighted the role of IT as an enabling technology throughout an economy. But although the influence of IT in transforming the way in which business and consumer transactions are done is clear to all participants in the production-consumption process, it is difficult to attribute a specific value to and precisely measure the importance of the role of IT in improving consumer welfare. The measurement of the economic value of public infrastructure has traditionally been problematic because of its ‘public good’ nature, which means that many users can benefit from use of public infrastructure at the very same time. This is especially true of ‘New Economy’ infrastructure such as IT, which links so naturally with developments in telecommunications so that the existence of many users, far from creating congestion in use, actually enhances the value of the infrastructure through network effects. In response to the measurement problem, the approach of the current paper is to utilise an economic model that looks at the end result – observations on changes in the pattern of consumer spending behaviour – and econometrically estimates the extent of the link between these behavioural changes and their drivers: traditional economic stimuli as well as changes in the economic environment due to advances in technology and improved provision of public sector IT infrastructure. Counterfactual simulations with the estimated model provide money-metric measures of the welfare benefits of innovations in Internet-based public sector IT infrastructure in a variety of OECD economies.

Information and Communication Technologies and Productivity Growth: A Survey of the Literature

This paper presents a review of existing studies on dynamic, macroeconomic effects of the ICT on productivity and growth.