New Statesman: Cognizant’s UK, Ireland and Nordics Head Says Good Broadband is Necessary to Lead in Entrepreneurship and Innovation

“The struggle to meet the UK’s broadband targets is thrown into sharp relief when we consider just how modest those targets are,” writes Sanjiv Gossain. “That is not a failing of government, nor of business, but a universal failing – a failure to realize the importance of connectivity to success in a modern economy. It is often said that for the Millennials and teenagers growing up today, the internet is not a parallel world but is the world. The fact is, the same is now true for business.”

Gossain writes, “In advanced economies such as the UK, the majority of value is added through knowledge businesses. The backbone of a knowledge business is information, and there is more of it than ever before…In order for that data to be useful, however, it has to be transmissible.”

According to Gossain, when the information that a business relies on is stored elsewhere and the applications that it uses run on computers in another country, broadband speed, coverage and reliability ceases to be a matter of convenience and become a matter of necessity. “With more and more businesses basing their entire model on knowledge and information, and more and more business interaction taking place using telepresence and video conferencing, location is becoming less important to the viability of a new business, but connectivity is becoming progressively more so,” he writes.

“Indeed, the ability to collaborate using social platforms, to analyze data in real time and derive insights, to access powerful software and vast data stores, and to be able to do so from anywhere, are prerequisites to the success of many businesses operating today,” Gossain adds. “If we want to lead the world in entrepreneurship and innovation, and to reap the benefits of that across the nation, then better broadband provision is a good place to start.”

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