Industry news

Governments 'urged to support roll out of new broadband infrastructure'

Governments need to make sure they encourage the roll out of next generation fibre networks to meet growing business demand for bandwidth, an industry expert has said.

Speaking at the VON.x conference in the US, Larry Irving, head of the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA), said that businesses were increasingly demanding more bandwidth and it was vital governments provided the support to allow the infrastructure to be put in place, website telephonyonline.com reported.

Mr Irving pointed to a recent report from Nielsen which showed that workers were increasingly using internet video sites while in the office. He said that IT departments had reacted to this by blocking these sites, as they typically consume a significant amount of bandwidth.

However, according to the site, Mr Irving added that such reactive bandwidth management was not a long-term solution.

Instead, he reportedly stressed that governments needed to put in place public policies that encourage competition among firms installing next generation broadband networks.

Recently, Gartner stressed that it was important businesses did not stop their employees from using Web 2.0 technologies.

The firm said that the bandwidth usage and security of these systems was a concern, but that they also increased creativity.