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Broadband - fast enough for you?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 26 May 09, 08:38 GMT

I've just spent a holiday weekend in Ullapool, one of the UK's most attractive,most remote - and dampest - places. It was not my first visit - back in 2003 I came to this fishing port on Scotland's north west coast to film a report on the spread of broadband across the UK.

Back then, Ullapool didn't have it and was pretty annoyed about that, especially as the even more remote village of Achilitbuie further along the coast was being given a high-speed connection, thanks to some scheme or other.

The town was campaigning to get its BT exchange upgraded so that it too could join the broadband revolution. I remember visiting a boat builder who was desperate to use the internet to show customers far away how their boats were coming along.

Six years on, Ullapool has got broadband. While sipping a malt whisky in the bar of my hotel, I sat using the free wifi to download Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's excellent movie podcast. It wasn't particularly fast - the 24Mb podcast took six minutes to download - but it worked.

Plenty of other people were touting laptops around the town - or using the internet connection in Ullapool's bookshop - and I got the impression that it was now regarded as an important amenity.

The website which campaigned for the arrival of broadband is still up - and I noticed this explanation of what the always-on internet would mean: "... there will be no need to log on and off, download times will be lightning fast and fears over the cost of the call will be removed. This means a vast range of services offered on the net would be instantly available - films, music and games, along with local information such as traffic and weather reports."

These days we've all - or just about all - come to take those benefits for granted. There are a few spots in the UK where you cannot get a broadband connection - "notspots" as some call them - but something like 99% of the population is within range of a broadband-enabled BT exchange.

But I'm afraid the companies that provide us with our internet connections can't relax, because the bar has been raised. You'll have noticed that the Ullapool website predicts that "download times will be lightning fast" - well they're not at warp speed yet in Ullapool or many other parts of the country.

In his forthcoming Digital Britain report, Lord Carter will outline the government's plans to give everyone who wants one a 2Mbps broadband connection. So that redefines "notspot" as anywhere which can't quite get to 2Mbps.

Even when we get everyone to that speed - say by 2012 - we will find that they're not satisified. They'll look around and find that half of the country can now get somewhere between 40 and 100Mbps from BT and Virgin Media, and they'll want some of that too.

The whole subject of broadband access in the UK and around the world is something we'll be addressing later this week in a series of reports on TV, on radio and online.

We've commissioned some research - to be published on Wednesday - which will give us a rough idea of just how many homes will fall within the new 2Mbps broadband Universal Service Obligation.

We are also planning a day of broadcasts about the issue from Alston in Cumbria, a place which has consistently refused to stay stuck in the slow lane, first setting up its own broadband network, and now digging up the streets to lay fibre.

I'm writing this from Inverness airport, on my way to Cumbria, and I'm struggling to get online. The map provided by my mobile broadband supplier tells me that I should be able to get a 3g connection here, but when I plug in my 3g dongle to my laptop, web pages take minutes to load.

A few years ago I would never have expected to be able to get online from an Ullapool hotel or an Inverness departure lounge - now I do. We're all getting much more demanding when it comes to the availability and speed of broadband, and that means this is an issue which will be a continuing headache for politicians and internet providers.

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