Digital Decade – the broadband revolution

It’s all too easy to forget how communications have changed our lives over  the past ten years.

As we sit in our multi-channel TV homes, with the world a mouse click away, listening to the latest downloads on MP3 players, the largely analogue world of the 1990s seems an age away.

Take this Christmas, for example.

You’ll quite possibly receive gifts, or tuck into food, that was chosen, ordered and paid for online.

As you open your presents, maybe you’ll take pictures and videos on your mobile and upload them so that far flung family and friends can share in the fun.

Broadband revolution

And when it comes to Christmas TV, there’ll be no need to fight over the remote control – just record what you want on the PVR or watch it online later.

This was the digital decade when communications in the UK underwent a complete transformation.

Over the next few days we’ll look back at some of the changes that have taken place over the past ten years, starting today with arguably the largest – the broadband revolution.

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If you travelled back in time to 1999 and stopped the first person you met,  it’s quite possible they’d have yet to try out the internet.

Back then less than half of us ever had been online and even fewer homes – just one in five – had a connection to the web.

And even if you did have access to the web, it certainly wasn’t as simple as switching on the computer and clicking open a browser window.

First you had to wait for the dialup modem to splutter and bleep into life.

Once online – and you didn’t always get online – it seemed as if you spent as much time staring at an onscreen egg timer as any actual web pages.

Broadband launch

And all the while you faced the constant threat of being told to ‘get off that internet; I want to use the phone.’

But the UK was just 12 months away from a landmark event in getting the UK connected – the launch of the first always-on broadband internet services.

There were four main broadband providers – BT, Kingston Communications in the Hull area, and cable operators ntl and Telewest – and initially take -up was relatively slow.

In 2001 connections averaged around 5,500 a week – with the majority being via cable as BT was still rolling out services across its network- but within a few years it was completely different story.

By 2004 over half of all UK households had an internet connection, and more than a third of these were via broadband.

Faster speeds

Demand for broadband had exploded and there were now 73,800 broadband connections a week, a fifteen fold increase on 2001.

By the end of the year 6.2 million homes had broadband – over 90% more than 12 months earlier.

The following year the number of broadband subscribers overtook dial-up customers for the first time and broadband was now present in almost 30% of all UK households and businesses

At the same time prices were falling and speeds were rising.

In May 2004, a typical residential broadband ADSL connection cost £24.99 for 512kbit/s.

But by May 2005, domestic consumers could pay as little as £17.99 for a 1Mbit/s connection: twice the speed for less than 75% of the price.

Local Loop Unbundling

However, it was an event later that year that helped boost the rollout of broadband around the country.

In September 2005 Ofcom agreed a set of legally-binding Undertakings with BT which made BT open up its infrastructure to rival telecoms firms on an equivalent basis.

This accelerated a process known as Local Loop Unbundling (LLU – see panel) and encouraged firms other than BT to install their own telecoms equipment into the local BT exchange.

These telecoms companies could then offer their own direct phone or broadband service, giving consumers a greater choice of providers.

From the introduction of LLU based services in 2006 until 2009, the proportion of households with a fixed broadband connection increased by 20% to 65%.

Falling prices

LLU also helped drive down fixed-line prices.

Consumers were paying on average £23.30 a month (excluding VAT) for a broadband service delivered over a copper phone line at the end of 2005.

Today they are paying around £13.61 for the same service.

And broadband isn’t just limited to the home.

More than one in 10 households now has a mobile broadband connection and some 8 million people in the UK had accessed the internet on their mobile phone in the first quarter of this year.

Faster fixed line broadband speeds have also helped online catch-up TV to enter the mainstream and by 2009 we weren’t just talking about broadband but super-fast broadband.

Super-fast broadband

Super-fast – or next generation – broadband can deliver speeds of up to 10 times the level of today’s broadband services.

Ofcom has taken the lead in encouraging super-fast broadband, and both Virgin Media and BT are rolling out next generation broadband.

Super-fast broadband could revolutionise both home entertainment and the way we communicate as a nation.

For example, families would be able to perform several different tasks at once – such as internet downloading, gaming over the web or watching movies on high-definition TV.

We may also be able to talk to friends and relatives via video links, download albums in seconds and work from home more easily.

We’ve come a very long way in 10 years and as you can see, the next decade promises many exciting developments.

Tomorrow we will look at how broadcasting has developed over the past decade.

ParentPort: Working together for media standards