The Digital Divide

This catgegory occasionally overspills into general Ofcom related matters but further network related issues are dealt with in the NGNs section of the directory. The icons should give you a view of the type of content you are likely to find. Please see below for the key.

Date & Title	Contents	Content Type
2nd July 2007 More on the Digital Divide	Follow up piece covering some of the comments made on the initial post Line length charts and estimates of speeds Is it a social or a commercial problem?
29th June 2007 The Digital Divide	Is there a right to broadband? Capitalism vs Subsidy? Depends on social utility Issues with alternative access deployments
19th June 2007 The Broadband Dividend	What is the economic value of broadband to a nation? Do the intangibles demand intervention? Estimates on dividend from other countries
12th June 2007 Is Ofcom losing its way?	Review of comments made by Peter Luff, MP Political decisions being made by quangoes? Where does Ofcom play? Should they merge with Openreach?
29th May 2007 The politics of broadband	Two tier pricing: a nail in the coffin of the idealist Commercial reality of the market - winning ugly Ofcom "understands the dilemna"...
17th May 2007 £2.5bn or FTTH?	BT pays dividend instead of saving for FTTH Competition are behind and will not fill gap Why invest when risk is high and RoI poor?
16th April 2007 BSG: Lost in Translation	Headlines demand £10bn subsidy for 90% coverage What about the other 10%? The Digital Divide? Give the market a chance. Distortion could be fatal

The Digital Divide is still a philosophical debate because there is no clear evidence of economic disadvantage caused by the lack of broadband. People can still move home to where faster speeds are available if it is that important. Their "business case" will stack up, even if houses are more expensive where they need to be.

The Digital Divide theory alternatively relies on there being a basic need for broadband - a right to high speed access - because critical government services can only be accessed via high speed connections. If / when this happens, there may be validity in this argument, but we are not yet close to such a scenario being reality.

Neverthless, as with all good philosophical debates, the subject is broad enough and deep enough to be of interest to many people. I hope you find the articles thought-provoking!