The Internet Services Providers’ Association (‘ISPA’) has launched its 2024 policy roadmap, “Delivering Digital Britain”, setting out the strategic priorities that it argues the Government should embrace “to continue the work of transforming the nation’s digital infrastructure, ensuring that all citizens have access to fast, reliable, and future-proofed internet connectivity.”

The roadmap outlines what it calls a number of ‘quick wins’ that the Government can achieve within the first 100 days of office. For example, in an attempt to address a perceived lack of co-ordination across government departments, ISPA calls for telecoms infrastructure rollout to be a cross-governmental priority with an overarching strategy that “brings together network, build, skills, investment, take up, and services” and is led by a minister within the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology. It also urges the Government to commit to a planning framework that will make rollout of infrastructure faster and more efficient. This includes extending the permitted development rights for broadband infrastructure, consulting on the effectiveness of the National Underground Asset Register, and clarifying that regulations relating to telegraph pole coating in England and Wales are aligned with Northern Ireland and the European Union. The third and final ‘quick win’ is for the Government to embrace so-called ‘flexi-permits’ which designate areas rather than individual roads for works, commenting that streetworks remain a ‘key barrier’ to fixed and mobile connectivity rollout. ISPA argues that the implementation of flexi-permits would “see considerably faster rollout with less disruption for local residents, and substantial carbon saving in the deployment of gigabit broadband”.

Turning to the longer term, ISPA identifies five priorities. First, it calls for a “growth-enabling and competitive regulatory environment” in which the regulator does not adopt a blanket approach, but instead “take[s] a holistic approach when it comes to decision making in terms of telecoms – considering all aspects of the telecoms market and the various types of companies”. Second, ISPA calls for the Government to expand public-private partnerships to ensure that the UK achieves near universal coverage. It also urges consistency among local authorities to speed up the deployment of infrastructure, and for the Government to consider how additional funding programmes can support reaching the final 100,000 premises that are very hard to reach.

Third, the roadmap calls for an information campaign, aided by local government and civil society organisations and as part of a wider digital skills strategy, to inform people about the importance of digital connectivity and encourage businesses to invest in digitisation. Fourth, ISPA states that the current approach to the resilience of the UK’s critical infrastructure is of “implementing isolated, disjointed solutions”. It again calls for the adoption of a more holistic approach which “aligns and coordinates efforts between the critical national infrastructures sectors”, and points specifically to the need to take action to improve the core resilience of the grid.

Finally, ISPA urges the Government to recognises that “online safety is a shared responsibility”, and that local internet service providers are no longer the only gatekeepers to the internet, but that this role is shared by, among others, operating systems, DNS and VPN providers. It reminds the Government to be “aware of this complex landscape” so that Ofcom can create appropriate online safety guidance.

The roadmap can be read in full here.