Companies such as Freeserve buy broadband capacity wholesale from companies like BT and sell it on to consumers.* Cable companies. Through BT’s copper network and using a technology called DSL, these are able to send internet signals at high speeds.* Resellers. Next-generation broadband would cut the wait to just three seconds.There are three types of broadband company offering these services in the UK:* DSL operators. A new report by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young shows that it would take around 10 minutes to download the average pop song on narrowband internet With broadband, this would fall to 30 seconds. While this is fine for viewing web pages, the download speeds are generally too slow for more advanced applications. The bad news for Mr Alexander is that it is about to spark a huge row over BT’s dominance and the Government’s approach to competition.Most domestic internet users access the web through BT’s copper wire network, known as “narrowband”.

Tim Johnson, principal analyst at research firm Ovum, sums up the Government’s chances of achieving its 2005 goal: “Not a hope in hell.”Like many technology experts, however, Mr Jackson senses that broadband is on the brink of taking off in the UK, spurred on by BT’s decision to reduce its monthly broadband retail price to £29.99. Never mind the G7, Britain is lagging behind most of its continental European rivals (see the graph above). Deep down, Broadband Britain has become a bit of an embarrassment. Is 2005 realistic? “We have already achieved considerable success with narrowband.”You’ve probably got the picture. Is this target still achievable? “It’s a challenge, not just for government but for industry too,” says Mr Alexander.

But what about New Labour plans for world broadband domination? Mr Alexander’s predecessor (and now boss), Patricia Hewitt, boasted a year ago that by 2005 Britain would have the “most extensive and competitive” broadband market of the G7 countries. “Six months ago I asked BT to lower its prices, so this is a significant step,” he tells The Independent on Sunday.
A good opening gambit. He’s the minister responsible for e-commerce, charged with encouraging us all to sign to up to the future – the high-speed internet.But in the week after BT slashed its broadband prices, the Department for Trade and Industry minister is strangely reticent. If there was one man you’d think would believe Labour’s rhetoric on broadband, it would be Douglas Alexander. I think people have just got to get to grips with the fact that biotech companies are not just going to sequence genes, file a patent and rule the world.”. “Gene discovery has become yesterday’s news,” he says, “but we will give people stuff to get excited about. Plus our business model is resilient: we make the picks and shovels and then we get out and go mine.”The recent announcement on Vevesca may have been a blow, but Kranda believes that the very existence of such a drug demonstrates the great possibilities of proteomics.

“I am optimistic because there is no doubt we are at the centre of a revolution that is changing the pace of discovery. Unlike many of his rivals, OGS has still got a £176m cash war-chest to play with, and as he points out, vogues in the market change all the time. The pattern of partnership has taught the drugs firms a different lesson: ‘why buy the restau- rant when I can pick off the menu?’ “Despite it all, Kranda remains sanguine. Judged on the same scale as straight pharmaceuticals, it doesn’t look good.Nor does it look good for those investors who assumed that the biotechs would spend a few years bringing their techniques up to scratch, and then be bought by the large drugs groups.”Big pharma certainly relies on biotech to provide a proportion of its research, but both sides have understood the value of alliances,” says Kranda “They aren’t simply going to buy the biotechs. It is true that in many cases the pipeline of drugs from the biotechs is either thin or risky or both. And one-day strikes by Aslef members working on the Tyne and Wear Metro is threatening to scupper the opening in May of a £100m line extension.Silverlink services between London and Birmingham could also continue to be hit bystrike action, and London Underground, where the RMT has dismissed a 2 per cent pay offer as an “insult”, may see disruption.Industrial unrest gathered momentum with the appointment of Bob Crow, a hard-left RMT leader.