PhoneAbility

2. Welcome from DTI

STEPHEN SPEED - Director of Broadband, DTI

When I was approached by Tony Shipley and his colleagues, it suddenly dawned on me that, at least in the time I have been here, we just had not given any thought to the whole issue of access for disabled people and older people. I very much welcome the fact that we were approached by PhoneAbility. We are very delighted to be able to support you. We are delighted that you have come here today. We feel very privileged and honoured that you have brought this meeting to our building.

As I will repeat later, even though I cannot stay myself, we do want to hear what you have to say, both to each other and to us, because this is an area which is of importance both in the public policy domain, and I believe also in the commercial domain. The transformation that broadband is capable of delivering to peoples lives is really quite truly radical. Broadband has the potential, we think, to equal the impact that electricity, water and gas have had on society.

Because broadband is always on, and because it is fast, it enables enormously greater collaboration and communication between people, businesses and Government, and the associated content and applications that now go with broadband have significant potential to advance the quality of life and to overcome social barriers and various forms of digital divide.

We can see how some of the effects are starting to transform communities, especially breaking through those barriers to social exclusion. For example, we are already seeing how older people are transformed into "silver surfers", which is a term I have not come across before, which recognises that a senior generation of learners are mastering the technical skills that are key to discovering new interests and activities. I know this to be true because my father is one such, he is busily investigating broadband and trying to do as much as he can with it in his retirement.

A couple of years ago, we made available £30 million for a broadband fund, which we gave to the Regional Development Agencies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to address the lack of availability of broadband, which in those days was very acute across wide areas of the UK. The idea was that we would fund the development of innovative pilot projects. I have been very impressed with the very imaginative ways in which this funding has been used across the country to create new ways of accessing broadband.

For example, in East Cheshire, Age Concern is piloting broadband access to ICT services to older people whilst building its broadband capacity as Cheshire County Council's first voluntary sector partner in its broadband network. The project will increase the number of older people accessing broadband services and promote equal opportunities and social inclusion by challenging digital exclusion.

A key aim of the project is to identify effective strategies for engaging older people and the voluntary sector as partners in broadband take-up. There are other examples. In Cumbria, a project called Alston Cybermoor is a good example of a project that has made real differences to issues of economic regeneration, life-long learning, take-up of e-Government services and low-cost broadband provision in England's highest and one of its remotest market towns. Carpenters Connect in the London Borough of Newham offers a radical solution to the challenges of getting disadvantaged communities online and encouraging community activity and participation through a range of technical solutions.

Stimulating broadband take-up and use across the UK remains one of our top priorities. For that reason, we have now set up a joint DTI and DEFRA rural broadband team, who have put a lot of effort into trying to work with agencies in the countryside to get better usage and take-up of broadband in rural communities for whom broadband has so much to offer. I think there is good evidence that all the things we have been trying to do have stimulated availability of broadband.

Four years ago, as Tony alluded to, we really had very little indeed. Thanks to the work of BT and others - and I am very happy to acknowledge that, because it is very important that we do pay tribute to these companies who are making risky investments - we now have a network available to approximately 93% of the population and, if I may correct your figures, I believe that by next year we are looking, by about September, at 99.6%.

In the time I have been in this job - and it is no thanks to me - broadband take-up in the UK has risen from about 1.5 million to some 5.5 million in the last 18 months. We have now overtaken Germany, which has a far larger population than the UK, in terms of broadband take-up.

Despite all of this, we are just coming to the end of the first stage of our broadband journey. There is much more to do before the benefits of broadband are really truly absorbed into the fabric of our social and business life. The Prime Minister knows this, and he reflected this in what he said at the party conference at the end of September. He said that he wants every home who want broadband to actually have it - not just to be able to have it - by 2008.

We look forward today to finding out a great deal more about the agenda that you share, and hearing both what you have to say to each other and what you have to say about public policy issues too. As I said at the beginning, we very much value you being here. We will enjoy listening to what is said today, and I hope we will meet up with PhoneAbility at some time in the near future and review what has happened today.

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