Broadband: More haste, less speed BOURNEMOUTH, a seaside resort on Britain's south coast, is not an obvious place to experiment with speedy broadband. Yet a smattering of its homes enjoy internet speeds that leave more cosmopolitan places in the shade. Optical fibres installed by CityFibre, a small telecoms company, allow services 70 times faster than the national average. At one gigabit per second (Gbps), they rank among the zippiest residential connections in the world. Britain aspires to be a world-beating digital economy. That requires a speedy internet. Since 2010 average broadband speeds have trebled; the rollout of broadband to rural areas, though much delayed, compares well with efforts abroad. Yet very few can access anything like the speeds offered in Bournemouth. As connections of 1-2 Gbps grow common in Seoul, Tokyo and parts of America, some fret that Britain's networks will fall behind. For several years BT, which manages much of Britain's telecommunications infrastructure through a subsidiary, Openreach, has been wiring up British neighbourhoods with fast fibre optics. Yet in most cases the new lines terminate in street cabinets: the final short hop to homes and offices is along old copper telephone wires, drastically reducing possible connection speeds. Replacing those wires with fibre is expensive. BT will eventually supply customers who demand it, but at a hefty connection fee. That has encouraged a gaggle of independent firms, such as CityFibre, to pitch speedier connections. But large fibre projects require hefty capital and much digging, and offer slow returns. Hyperoptic, for now Britain's biggest residential "gigabit" supplier, mostly targets big blocks of flats in London. Tech boosters think the government should stump up for more gigabit links. They note that few of the world's whizziest networks were built without some state subsidy; they also say ubiquitous fibre would cost only half as much as Britain's proposed high-speed railway line. Promoting high-capacity connections now might avoid a costly crunch down the line. In November the Broadband Stakeholder Group, a government and industry body, predicted that most households will want no more than 19 megabits per second (Mbps) in 2023 - only a third faster than today's average speed. But Oliver Johnson of Point Topic, a consultancy, thinks 100-500 Mbps a safer bet. Though most homes would struggle to make full use of gigabit bandwidth, faster connections do seem to mean more internet use. Bigger pipes would speed the evolution of data-hungry services, too. The greatest benefits might accrue to small and medium-sized firms, which need more than today's "superfast" speeds but cannot afford to purchase premium leased lines. But there are good reasons to favour Britain's current, cautious approach. Analysys Mason, a research firm, thinks full fibre would take 15 years to roll out. Britain might spend lavishly on kit that could be cheaper later, when blistering speeds might also be better appreciated. Mike Galvin of Openreach thinks new technology may eventually mean copper delivering speeds comparable with fibre. Australia's new government is slashing the targets of that country's fibre roll-out after costs almost doubled. Britain's ultra-fast networks will remain rare oases, at least for a while. But in the long run plucky young networking firms may prompt swifter action from BT. In America, Google's promise to build fibre networks in Kansas City and Austin has nudged sluggish incumbents into bringing forward their own ultra-fast products. Competition is a powerful accelerant.