PTS warns: Sweden is falling behind in broadband

The Swedish government's IT policy is coming under increasing criticism, most recently from its own agency, the PTS, which in its 2008 broadband mapping exercise found that - in contrast to key competitor countries - there is a lack of political will to expand broadband. In order for Sweden to be able to maintain its position in the broadband area, a long-term goal for broadband access is needed, as well as an increase in the minimum level for Internet access, PTS points out. IT&Telekomföretagen fully shares PTS's criticism, which we know also comes from other important quarters in society. How long can the government sit still and watch the world run away from us?

PTS has recently published "Broadband Survey 2008". The report states, among other things, that 122,000 households and businesses lack wired broadband; however, the majority (117,000) have wireless broadband (which does not have the same capacity as wired). The government has set the minimum acceptable speed at 20 kbit/s - compared with ambitions in Finland (1 Mbit/s), the UK (2 Mbit/s) and France (0.5 Mbit/s). The PTS also notes that "there is a clear risk that Sweden will fall behind in the broadband area" as a result of a non-existent policy in this area. It notes that this affects Sweden's long-term competitiveness. Furthermore, it believes that "large future investments will be needed, which is likely to be very heavy to bear for an industry that at the same time can expect the total turnover of the broadband market to increase at a significantly lower rate than before". PTS summarizes three pieces of advice to the government: formulate a clear, national, long-term goal; promote deployment through collaboration between private actors and, secondarily, targeted procurement efforts; and take a holistic approach to the role of municipalities.

The PTS broadband mapping study very deservedly raises some very central issues concerning the government's lack of policy for IT and telecom. IT&Telekomföretagen has also raised these issues with the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, most recently at a meeting with State Secretary Leif Zetterberg. We appreciate that PTS is drawing attention to the problem for the industry in taking on the heavy future investments, especially in the light of the passing on of costs to the industry that the government is currently pursuing. IT&Telekomföretagen intends to send a letter to the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications shortly, in which we raise a number of concrete demands. Demands that the government must live up to in order to be able to claim to have anything resembling a telecom infrastructure policy.