The Digital Britain report is finally out. On the 16th of June, Lord Carter’s long-awaited report into plans for our digital future were revealed.
There’s been lots of media chat about this already, but in case you’ve missed it, what we think are the three headlines are as follows:
1. Analogue Radio off by 2015: The intention here is to get national FM services and existing local services over to DAB by 2015, freeing up space for what’s being called “ultra local” stations on FM. Listeners would need to migrate from FM to digital by 2015. There are also targets proposed to get digital radio listening up to 50% by 2013, a somewhat ambitious target, and a target of DAB-only car radios in new cars by 2013. AM stations also need to shift to DAB.
2. Broadband tax: To help achive the Government’s “every home must have at least 2Meg broadband by 2012” pledge, a stealth tax of 50p per month on all landlines is proposed to improve the infrastructure.
3. Internet piracy. The target is for UK ISPs to reduce online file-sharing and piracy by 70% within a year, with measures ranging from warning letters, speed throttling, to details being passed to copyright owners. Ofcom will be given the power to enforce this.
For the full report, see http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/5631.aspx