Blogging from the Broadband Britain Summit at the QEII Conference Centre

Picture the scene - best part of 400 (mostly) civil servants and public sector people with a sprinkling of businesses and quite a few people from BT.

Declan Curry of BBC Breakfast ('DC" in the notes) did his best to generate a bit of adrenaline in his questioning. He worked hard and did a good job with difficult material.

Many speakers said "There is no room for complacency". It was said so often, and in the morning's tone of back-slapping self-congratulation, it seemed to me that there's obviously lots of room for complacency. Much play made of the 99% availability of 'broadband' (ADSL I think you mean Minister). Of course convenient forgetting of the real meaning of this which is that exchanges covering 99% of the UK population have been enabled - but we don't know how many on those exchanges are receiving service and of what quality. But don't worry your pretty little heads about it - BT says we're only talking about 50-60,000 people.

Also much comfort from the reassuring words of DEFRA on the potential for a new urban/rural digital divide as new services roll out (for example the 8 megabit services being launched now) - rural people will be provided with 'acceptable' levels of service - that's all right then.

No one mentioned or used the OECD subscribers per hundred head of population metric that I believe is a better measure of take-up.

The afternoon was a bit better - with sessions onbut by then my laptop battery was flat - and I was beginning to lose the will to live . . .