Broadband Wales: The 'Tsar' interview

By Gareth Jones BBC Wales business and industry correspondent

Broadband Wales: The broader issues

In the second of a two-part series on broadband, Gareth Jones interviews the "Broadband Tsar", Michael Eaton, appointed by the Welsh assembly government to lead the £115m strategy to develop the technology in Wales.

Q: When it comes to availability and take-up of broadband, what is your latest information?

A: Our statistics come from the service providers - BT mainly.

They tell us that 63-4% of the Welsh population can get broadband if they want it, but the actual take-up on average is below 5%.

Wales could be doing a little bit better than this, but only if we can improve its supply and the demand for it.

Q: On the supply side, what was your reaction to BT's recent announcement they would be setting trigger levels for 450 more exchanges and their admission that those trigger levels were "challenging"?

A: We welcomed the fact that trigger levels are being reduced by a major provider.

But it's still a challenge, especially in rural areas. Government needs to intervene; what we need to do is get more customers for broadband and a more competitive landscape with more providers and different kind of technologies like wireless broadband.

For many, "fast internet" doesn't mean very much. But for a small company, it can lower their costs and/or open up new markets.

We'll be seeing a lot of marketing from the assembly on this. We're investing £2.4 million in marketing/education to increase take-up.

Q: Will you be investing in public-private partnerships, supporting local authorities working with service providers to increase the roll-out of broadband in areas where trigger levels are too challenging?

A: We'll see more of these partnerships because they make sense.

We will fund a number of projects in the marketplace, for example the Regional Innovation Broadband Support Project (RIBS).

Including match funding, this is a £13.4m - including matched funding from private sector - fund to help authorities in Objective One areas.

They can use it if they have an "innovative project" to service the needs of business in their community.

Q: There is some concern though that we are seeing the development of a two-speed Wales, with areas outside major urban centres falling behind in the implementation of broadband technology. What is your view?

A: It's always a danger: it's harder to make the business case work in rural areas. Even with lower trigger levels of 100, what happens if you can get only 35 people wanting broadband?

Then there is a discussion to be had about government intervening - and we're always looking at this. But let's not get hung up on ADSL.

There are other ways of delivering broadband like wireless and satellite.

We have the satellite subsidy - £2m which is in turn funded through a £20m WDA fund. Small companies can apply for this wherever they are in Wales.

The WDA is also providing Fibrespeed Services to business parks across Wales and there's the Broadband Infrastructure Subsidy Initiative. This is an Objective One funded scheme worth £26.8 million with match funding.

It's an open call for suppliers to provide baseline capability across an area. It should provide wider availability, as opposed to the confined provision for RIBS 'hotspots' I referred to earlier.

The other thing is that the public sector is buying bandwidth across Wales and that will increase the network.

I'm referring to the Lifelong Learning network for schools, libraries and ICT learning centres. That's a £36m investment over five years.

DAWN 2 is bringing broadband to doctors' surgeries and hospitals. And there's JANET - the higher education network. This can only handle non-commercial traffic by law.

But what all this publicly- financed network-building means is that for broadband providers, the risk of building their own infrastructure is offset.

Q: You've been in your new job for 12 weeks. What do you hope to have achieved over its five-year lifetime?

A: We can achieve 95% broadband availability within five years and could even close that gap with new technologies coming in.

In five years time, the broadband network should be in place to underpin our economic structure, increasing social inclusion and learning. The whole of Wales should benefit.