§ The Earl of Northeskasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the Written Answer by Lord Sainsbury of Turville on 19 November 2001 (WA 115), whether they have arrived at a conclusive definition of broadband in respect of data transfer speeds for (a) the commercial market; and (b) the residential market. [HL1851]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Sainsbury of Turville)The Government view broadband as a generic term describing a range of technologies operating at various data transfer speeds.
§ The Earl of Northeskasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the recent announcement that the United Kingdom has in excess of a million broadband subscribers, whether the data transfer speeds of these connections are all in excess of 384kbit/second; and, if not, what is the breakdown of data transfer speeds of these connections. [HL 1852]
§ Lord Sainsbury of TurvilleOftel estimates that by the end of February 2003 there were over 1.5 million broadband connections in the UK. Not all these connections offered data transfer speeds in excess of 384kbps.
In order to assure a consistent definition for take-up, Oftel includes all services marketed as broadband in its monthly broadband statistics. These are based on publicly available information from operators such as BT, Telewest and ntl and include services ranging from 128kbps to over lmbps. It is not possible to provide a breakdown of the statistics by data transfer speed, as this information is provided on a commercially confidential basis.