Broadband Wales: The broader issues

By Gareth Jones BBC Wales business and industry correspondent

AMs are due a progress report on rolling out news technology on Wednesday Understanding broadband: Answers to the burning questions

In the first of a two part series, Gareth Jones looks at exactly where Wales stands with regard to the broadband revolution.

Not a week goes by these days without a survey or announcement showing how much difference information technology is making to our lives.

Many of us are already using computers where we work and live, but the revolution is about to quicken. And one of the big reasons for that is broadband.

More and more people are using the internet but broadband makes it at least 10 times faster than conventional dial up-connections using a phone line.

The big issue in Wales has been its availability at affordable cost. And there are still problems. But there is a consensus now that big advances are being made in rolling out this new technology.

Successful economy

This Wednesday Economic Development Minister Andrew Davies is due to deliver a progress report to Assembly Members.

He will give details of the Welsh Assembly Government's £115m Broadband Wales strategy. He is expected to tell members that Broadband Wales is a vital part of plans to make Wales a successful economy by 2010 and outline the ways he is supporting the technology's implementation and use.

"The assembly government's achieving what it has set out to do,"' according to Professor Mike Tedd, Chair of the independent Wales Advisory Committee on Telecommunications.

" Yes, there are gaps, but the whole picture now on broadband availability is hugely better than I ever expected."

Those gaps have opened because BT will only upgrade its telephone exchanges to provide broadband when it is convinced there is enough demand to justify the investment.

BT has just announced new trigger levels for previously ignored parts of Wales

It has set trigger levels: typically, if 250 people in a community sign up to register as potential broadband users, BT will then 'enable' its exchange there. But BT did not set trigger levels at all in large parts of Wales where the population was too thinly spread. Until now.

Last month BT declared that "100% broadband coverage of every community in Wales was achievable by 2005 if industry and government pulled together".

The company announced a big step forward towards reaching that goal when it set trigger levels for another 244 Welsh exchanges serving nearly a quarter of a million homes and businesses.

Suddenly, far more of Wales was now in line for going on-line using broadband connections.

But there is still some distance to go.

Pierre Danon, Chief Executive of BT Retail, admitted that many of the trigger levels were "very challenging to hit".

"In some areas we are critically dependent on public partnerships to stimulate demand and to intervene with support to get the exchanges enabled early or to even help reduce the triggers," he says.

Three days before that announcement Mr Danon had visited Caerphilly, an example of one of those partnerships.

In the past, large files have had to be burned onto CD and put in the post, which may or may not arrive on time. Chief executive of BT Retail Pierre Danon on the limits of not having broadband

The county borough became the first in Wales outside the cities to have every one of its communities geared up for broadband.

Thanks to funding from the Corus Regeneration Partnership and support from the Council, the Welsh Development Agency and BT, about three quarters of businesses in the area now have subsidised broadband connections.

While in Caerphilly Mr Danon visited Sutherland Trading, a company which imports musical instruments from all over the world.

"The window for trading in different time zones in real time is very small but broadband allows us to be constantly on line," said managing director Gareth Jones.

'Held back'

"We can see emails coming in and can react immediately. We can also send and receive huge files of information, including pictures and adverts to customers.

"In the past, large files have had to be burned onto CD and put in the post, which may or may not arrive on time."

Sutherland Trading is exactly the kind of company that the county of Powys wants to attract and retain.

Jeremy Wright, the council's head of economic development, says the county's 'knowledge economy' companies are being held back without broadband. But he's been encouraged by BT latest announcement.

"Before, we had just six exchanges which could be enabled. Now we have 40," he says.

"Our challenge is to get people to register interest and hit those trigger levels."

But in an area which does not have access to regeneration money or Objective One funds, can Powys get a successful public partnership going with BT?

Jeremy Wright thinks so. "There is European money-Objective Two funding, which we will apply for. I also think there is money available under the assembly's broadband strategy. What I'd like is more information on how to access it."

This will the test for the Broadband Strategy. With clearly willing partners, can it deliver the resources to really spread the technology to every corner of the country?

That's one of the questions Gareth Jones will be putting to Director of Broadband Wales Michael Eaton, in the second part of this series.