Speaking at the Revolution at the Edge broadband conference E-commerce minister Stephen Timms made it clear that he wanted to see faster broadband connections.

He noted the importance high speed networks play in today's life, whether in business or at home, but said that spreading the fibre that can carry high-speed broadband will become an increasingly important part of his work.

This echo's the comments of The Broadband Industry Group (BSG) who have released their most recent report detailing where the UK broadband industry and the government should be focusing it's efforts.

The BSG warned that although there has been progress in 'Broadband Britain' recently, this is no reason to think that all the major problems have been solved. It wants the government to be investigating and supporting investment into other broadband technologies rather than the UK being left behind in the continual race for faster (and affordable) broadband connections.
This is in addition to the continuing push to make the UK the most extensive and competitive broadband market in the industrialised world by 2005.

At present apart for localised LLU providers the fastest affordable connection is only 2Mbps, which while is sufficient for internet use, fails to provide the type of connection which services like streaming HDTV will demand.
Although BT is taking a serious interest in Metro Ethernet as a way of offering broadband services, at present there are no plans for any large-scale deployments of the technology in the UK as in other parts of the world.

The question is will both BT and the government be left behind in the broadband race again?