Digital Britain pledge 'not enough' for UK VoIP future

The government's recently unveiled universal broadband pledge is not enough to help certain companies roll-out VoIP and other rich media services in the future, an expert claims.

Communications minister Lord Carter's Digital Britain report pledged to deliver broadband of a minimum speed of 2Mbps to all UK households by 2012.

Rob Bamforth, principal analyst at IT analysis firm Quocirca, told Computing.co.uk that 2Mbps is such a "low service commitment".

"If you're a business-to-consumer CIO [chief information officer] or one whose employees are working from home, you'd have difficulty rolling out IP telephony, virtual private networks and other back-office content access," he explained.

Mr Bamforth added that businesses moving towards rich media services and video will also "start to struggle" due to the low minimum bandwidth provision.

While speaking at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts last month, Lord Carter defended the 2Mbps pledge by saying that it was perceived to be the most realistically achievable speed.