This report by Francesco Caio, subtitled “Review of Barriers to Investment in Next Generation Access”, was published today by BERR. It focuses on the development of Next Generation Access (NGA) in the UK.
“The development of NGA is not just an upgrade of a digital infrastructure that makes a user’s web browsing speedier, although this on its own will be welcome to many. NGA arrives at a time when basic popular services, such as voice telephony, radio and television broadcasting are extending their reach from existing fixed and wireless networks to the Internet. At the same time, the continued development of new digital devices is making it possible for consumers to use a growing range of web based services without any interaction with a PC.”
The Scottish Government issued this research report yesterday which investigates the difficulties that a significant minority of Scottish SMEs that took part in the 2005 and 2006 Annual Small Business Surveys (ASBS) reported in accessing finance from banks.
“A striking finding is that almost two thirds of the businesses approached only one bank, typically their existing bank, and did not ’shop around’ once their application for finance had been rejected. This may suggest concerns about the time and resources involved in approaching other banks, uncertainty in approaching banks with which they were not familiar, or a ‘discouraged borrower’ effect. Supply-side banking interviews indicated that difficulties are more likely to be encountered by ‘new to the bank’ customers – relationship banking suggests that the existing bank is likely to be more sympathetic to funding requests.”
