Business broadband services should offer a data rate of 10Mbit/s, according to the government, and 2Mbit/s is the minimum necessary to deliver services and applications to corporate teleworkers and branch offices.

Speaking at the TMA2002 conference in Brighton last week, the government's e-envoy, Andrew Pinder, said the construction of "Broadband Britain" had made progress. But experts urged the government and carriers such as BT to improve patchy broadband coverage, and said potential customers should sign up to BT's pre-registration schemes to ensure that DSL services at least would be available in their areas.

Next month, a West Yorkshire village will become the first area in the UK to be upgraded to broadband under BT Wholesale's pre-registration scheme. Todmorden's exchange will be upgraded to support ADSL after 200 residents said they would pay for fast Internet access if it became available.

Six further exchanges - Irby on the Wirral, Paddock Wood and Pembury in Kent, Penn in Buckinghamshire, Ponteland in Northumberland and Twyford in Berkshire - will also be upgraded after demand was confirmed by service providers. The upgrades should go live in December.

But Pinder indicated that DSL would not meet bandwidth demands in the long term, particularly for business users, so leaving fibre optic connections to provide faster connections. He argued that 500kbit/s was a good starting definition for broadband because "it takes away the wait" and 2Mbit/s was adequate to run services and applications. But he argued that 10Mbit/s should be the target speed, which is realistically only achievable over fibre optic cables.

Continued pressure

Keith Todd, chairman of the Broadband Stakeholders Group, the government's advisory group on broadband, added that there would be continued pressure on the government and telecoms carriers to extend broadband to the third of teleworkers currently beyond its reach.

"Over the next few months it is important that government, industry and regional development agencies discuss how we can target coverage," said Todd.

Despite his concerns he predicted a bright future for broadband. Forecasts suggest the UK will have two million broadband subscribers by next summer.

But the government and BT have said rollout must be driven by the market, leading to criticism that many rural areas will have to wait several years before affordable broadband reaches them.

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