Francesco Caio advises the English government on broadband issues, and he pointed toward a future where a patchwork of local communities would build smaller, more powerful networks that would have to function well with each other in order to survive.
"Building a network has traditionally been associated with big companies but there is going to be a major shift to local communities being the owners of their own networks and picking the service providers they want to go on it," he said.
For example, Virgin Media and British Telecommunications are teaming up to deliver faster broadband speeds to English customers. The speeds range from 50MBps to 100MBps, but the plan will only provide these speeds to about half of all British customers.
But the Broadband Stakeholders' Group, an organization that evaluates such measures, said that to expand next-generation broadband service to the entire country would cost about £29 billion.
Malcolm Corbett, the head of England's Community Broadband Network, noted that British Telecommunications is only planning to spend about 1.5 billion British pounds on its current expansion project.
"If BT can only invest £1.5bn that is going to be a drop in the ocean," he said. "There will be plenty of space for others to do innovative things and there are a lot of people developing projects of their own - and their reasons vary," he said.
The model for this patchwork method of broadband self-sufficiency is starting to pop up in rural areas of England, such as Kent, where 9,000 homes still lack broadband access. A local resident named Daniel Heery plans to use an existing fiber-optic network – and some elbow grease – to move his community into the next decade.
"I am a believer that communities can make a big difference," he said.
