Why we need to spend £30 billion on our broadband

There's no getting round it, £30 billion is a LOT of money. So much money, in fact, that even the government would have to do more than root around the back of its sofa and check the pockets of its dirty jeans to come up with that kind of cash.

It also happens to be the upper price of the Broadband Stakeholder Committee's prediction of how much it would cost to upgrade the UK's broadband and communications infrastructure to fibre-optic cables that could actually cope with the internet age.

That price is based on fibre to every house – allowing the kind of speeds that people are increasingly demanding for streaming video and downloading files.

But before you baulk at just how amazingly costly it is to bring the UK up to speed, it's important to put that price into some kind of context.

The great innovator

There was a time when Great Britain was the great innovator – it was the cradle of an industrial revolution from which an unprecedented period of scientific discovery were made.

But as we enter the information age, the UK is slipping behind its neighbours in terms of communications, and as computers continue to dominate our lives, the need for a top-notch infrastructure has never been more pressing.

I'm sure when people looked at the cost of putting down iron railway lines in 18th century Britain they baulked at the sheer price of investment, and yet that transportation system became a pivotal part of Britain's technological progression.

Now our broadband infrastructure is increasingly looking like the 21st equivalent of horses and carts, and although it will cost us huge sums in the short term, can we really afford to become a country so far from the cutting edge?

Yes, £30 billion is a lot of money, but the UK needs desperately to keep from lagging behind and, in the long run, I think investment at this pivotal moment will prove to be the best decision.