UK leads Italy in broadband stakes

Surely reason enough for a national holiday

Britain is trailing yet another broadband league table giving rise to further concerns about the future of broadband Britain.

According to the latest stats from NetValue, the UK is seventh in a league table of eight European countries when it comes to home use of broadband.

With just 2.3 per cent of UK households - that's around 210,600 homes - with a broadband connection, the UK is once again exposed as a broadband backwater.

That's despite the grandiose and pompous claims by the British Government that it intends to have "the most extensive and competitive broadband market in the G7 by 2005.

Ha! What utter tosh.

However, those in the broadband industry and in Government should take heart from the fact that Britain is at least ahead of Italy in this broadband chart of European countries.

With less than 1 per cent of homes connected to the Net, Italy really is struggling.

At the other end of the table, Sweden and Denmark are top of the broadband pops with more than 13 per cent of homes with a superfast Net connection.

Last week the elusive E-Commerce Minister, Douglas Alexander, called on the telecoms and Internet industry to cut prices and help stimulate demand for broadband.

In particular, he singled out BT to "exploit (its broadband) investment more aggressively" in a bid to get Broadband Britain on track.

Yeah, right. ®