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Its survival of the fastest as broadband Britain finally comes online.
Damian Reece Deputy - News Telegraph
BROADBAND Britain is finally becoming a reality. What a few years ago was just another New Labour Piece of spin is now bearing fruit, albeit through private enterprise.
The Technology is changing our lives, the way we consume and how we communicate.
In May the country passed a milestone when BT Group revealed that the number of broadband connections has exceeded the number of dial-up connections for the first time. Now the gap is widening rapidly. In the UK there are more than 8.8m Broadband connections including 2.6m using cable.
The country’s cable network also saw one of the many highly significant internet related take-overs announced this year when NTL finally unveiled plans to tie the knot with Telewest in a £3.4billion deal. Expanding broadband Internet provision is a central part of the rational behind the deal (as well as squeezing out costs in a fiercely competitive market).
In the first half of 2006, the number of broadband connections will probably surpass 10m. Under Ben Verwaayen BT’s chief executive, The telecoms giant has been transforming itself and the UK's main telecoms network which it operates, into a digital, Broadband–enabled piece of infrastructure which means that 99.6pc of the county can now connect to broadband.
Mr Verwaayen has likened this level of availability to the access homes have to running water. His choice of simile is apt because broadband has become the new utility of the 21st century – it will prove to be our legacy in the same way that the railways and sewers where the Victorians’.
But Broadband, which delivers high-speed, always-on connections, is now delivering two major benefits for companies that want to do business using the web – something that until broadband came along was a chore.
The technology has delivered not only the speed and data capacity to make the net a truly useful tool, but also it is delivering scale in terms of users. A 10m-strong market place is a place worth having.
That is why 2005 has seen so many internet-related deals and why there has been so much talk of a return to the dotcom boom.
Ian Fogg, senior analyst at Jupiter research, said: high connection always on connections are delivering better experience. But broadband is also much cheaper.
“When broadband launched in the UK typical prices where £40-£50 a month. Now they are under £20 and at the entry lever can be under £10. There are few reasons now for users to remain on dial up.
Broadband has turned websites into places to do business, whether its shopping for groceries, buying music, watching a film, buying a house, finding a job or making cheap or even free telephone calls.
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