UK broadband 'was held back by archaic telephone systems'

Although broadband has spread across the UK and prompted the growth of services such as voice over internet protocol (VoIP), the relatively low speed of connections has attracted criticism.

Envious eyes have turned to South Korea, where fibre optic lines have allowed surfers to access the internet at speeds up to forty times faster than in the UK.

Explaining the reason behind this lag experienced by Britain, a spokesperson for the Internet Services Providers' Association placed the blame on the failings of the traditional telephone network.

He acknowledged that the UK had been "one of the first industrialising and technologically adopting countries in the world", but this meant that its infrastructure was based on much older technologies.

However, it was suggested that current market pressure and advances in technology "will drive improvements in network performance" and increase connection speeds, which would in turn boost the reliability and clarity of VoIP services.

This issue is to be addressed this week at a summit called by the minister for competitiveness Stephen Timms, which will examine the possibility of introducing a fast fibre optic network across the UK.