Question Time Panel Session

Ken Matthews from Fife - about blind people and social inclusion.

Using broadband to promote social inclusion, lots of work with Scottish Government, but it all went on the backburner and we don't know why.

Nigel Hinton - DTI - we do take it seriously.

Vanessa Philips - here last year - people unaware of what they can gain. We did a survey of corporate clients 250 - don't really understand the business benefits. Needs more help from goverment to propmote.

Andrew Burke - BT - e-literacy very important. 930-940k users on broadband. Lots of consumer activity. We do need to show how easy it is to get the benefits of broadband. Need to show how broadband can drive business.

Ray Butler - multimedia company in SW - good level of cooperation with people in London and India. But we have had trouble with the underpinning infrastructure. Problem with domain names.

AB - not much you can do about domain names

John Wilson (not our one!) an independent consultant. Benefits of broadband yes - but there's lots of hacking and virus attacks. Protection is an issue.

Jeremy Ward from Symantec - there's a question of trust - and we have been finding that the UK is now number 1 in its infection rates for 'bots'. Infected systems controlled by others.

AB - Don't want content regulation.

Peter Sinclair from SEEDA - 930 - 940k businesses connected to broadband? But we have 4m businesses - how can that be? Andrew Burke - this is soho and SMEs over dsl - big businesses tend to use leased lines.

Ms Warner - Royal Mail. Lack of understanding on data protection and over regulation.

Challenge from guy who runs e-tyres - why connectivity so patchy - can't be 98%. BT says it's ok because compression will work