Member Article

250 times the broadband speed in just 20 years… but what does it mean for our lives?

By James Carsley, Senior Consultant at connectivity consultancy, FarrPoint

Picture the scene. The year is 2003, and a group of university friends are discussing whether they need broadband in their student flat.

“What is broadband?” asks one, because back in the heyday of the Nokia 3310, you couldn’t simply ‘Google’ something on your smartphone.

After much deliberation, the group decides that as they live 500 metres from a university building offering 24/7 internet access, there is no need for such a luxury. Had they plumped for the extravagance of a broadband connection, the speed would have been a heady 0.4MB per second. In the days before streaming, online gaming or video calling, this would have been used for browsing and studying, the occasional film download (which would take about two days), and maybe the odd check of the sports results.

You’ve probably guessed one of those students was me. Fast-forward ten years, and I am at the helm of a contract to roll out what was then known as ‘superfast’ broadband’ (30Mbps+) across 95% of Scotland. During presentations, I found myself frequently remarking how the world had changed immeasurably in just a decade, whilst also privately pondering what I would do with the rest of my career once this project was complete.

Another decade on, almost three-quarters of UK households have access to ‘Gigabit’ (1000Mbps) broadband – an increase in speed of a whopping 2000% on what those students were considering back in 2003. The drive to extend Gigabit connectivity to every household in the UK by 2030 has set in motion phenomenal levels of private investment, with more than 100 network providers set to collectively invest £12bn by 2025. Through subsidy, the public sector is helping to extend these Gigabit speeds to hard-to-reach areas, like the Scottish Highlands and Islands.

I won’t even try to predict what our lives will look like in another ten or twenty years; instead I’d rather focus on how we use this newly-built ability to connect with each other at high speed to transform the way we live, work, and consume services.

A huge emphasis is often put on the speeds, coverage and money invested, with less attention on what has this actually enabled.

It’s easy to recognise the more obvious changes to our lives, such as the way we consume entertainment and maintain relationships with loved ones, through the ability to video call or share images at the drop of a hat. Crucially, especially over the last few years, is the ability to work and learn from home. Alongside this, innovations that fall under the banner of smart homes have come into their own, such as smart thermostats allowing connectivity and technology to transform and help reduce the cost of the simple act of keeping warm, together with home security devices such as video doorbells, damp sensors, and the now commonplace voice assistants.

So, what’s next for wider society? How will it be driven, and who will drive it? Will the private sector provide the innovation we require to modernise, truly understand and take advantage of the advancements in connectivity, or is there a role for government and local authorities to transform the way they deliver public services?

I recently heard the Estonian ambassador, Viljar Lubi, talking about how their public services are accessed almost solely online, and how their journey was based around accessibility and ease of use. This was only achieved due to the country’s vision to become a digital society, with a strapline of ‘what is satisfactory now, shouldn’t satisfy tomorrow.’

The Internet of Things (IoT) is something UK local authorities have begun to embrace, enabled by the huge strides made in connectivity. Edinburgh, for example, is transforming the simple task of parking through interactive maps of empty spaces. Pollution from congestion is reduced, and safety and user experience are improved. Intelligent lighting and energy systems are also helping reduce the carbon footprint of buildings to avoid consuming unnecessary energy – all made possible by IoT and the connectivity it is based on.

The opportunities underpinned by improved digital connectivity also extend to businesses, who are reaping the rewards of real-time, connected systems and processes.

Many seemingly simple things that we take for granted in modern life and business are only possible because of the significant advances in digital connectivity over recent years.

Perhaps the most obvious examples are within retail and hospitality, where customers can often not only order goods or food online, but also track delivery right to their door in near real-time. This has significantly increased the customer base and revenue potential of businesses who have embraced these changes.

Services like Uber simply would not exist without digital connectivity to enable them, allowing customers to request transport on demand whilst also providing details of the vehicle, driver and cost, and allowing journeys to be shared by individuals for safeguarding purposes.

IoT can also assist manufacturing and logistics in many ways, like helping to manage the just-in-time deliveries needed to support car production. The correct parts arrive at the right assembly station at a precise time, to meet the matching vehicle ordered by the customer. This allows the parts to be married together within a tightly allotted timeframe before moving to the next stage in the process.

Sitting in my internet-free student digs twenty years ago, I could only have dreamed of these things - but with the right investment and innovation, who knows what potential challenges and solutions I’ll be talking about in another ten years.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by FarrPoint .