With all the news recently on Britain's future in the next generation broadband, Ofcom has waded into the debate and suggested that we may not need fibre after all.

Ofcom says that the market and infrastructure in the UK are very different to those countries where investment in fibre has already taken place, they also claim that these countries have higher population densities and, on average, users are closer to the exchange.
It also notes that in other countries the fibre rollout was driven by pay TV services, whereas the UK has a mature TV service and and existing broadband connections are "high speed". Although half of broadband users, who get a connection speed of less that 2Mbps, will disagree.

Instead of fibre, Ofcom suggests that next-generation networks may be based on 21CN upgrades to BT's existing copper access network, or improvements to Virgin Media's cable network, or even a completely new deployment of wired or wireless infrastructure, although it didn't give any details on what or when this will be.

So it looks as if the UK will be a slow starter in the race for faster internet speeds and have to play 'catch-up' yet again.