Creating the Superhighways of the Future

Region

United Kingdom

Associated With

UK Government - publisher

Defining Feature

A Government vision for competitive, private-sector-led broadband networks

Status

Historical event - UK Government Command Paper published in 1994

Overview

Creating the Superhighways of the Future was a British plan for the imagined future of broadband.

Published as Cm 2734 on 22 November 1994, it set out a UK vision of competitive broadband networks backed by private-sector investment and carrying new services.

It answered Parliament’s Optical Fibre Networks report. In the 1994–95 debate, “information superhighway” meant a fuller two-way multimedia system than the Internet then available to most users. Its imagined uses included work, learning and entertainment.

Why It Mattered

Broadband was already being treated as more than a faster way to send information: the surrounding UK debate tied its development to public access, privacy, security, intellectual-property rights and broadcasting. Cm 2734 captures a point when the imagined network was also a question of who would be served and what rules would govern a new shared medium.

The Government’s Broadband Vision

• Cm 2734 was published on 22 November 1994 as the Government’s response to the House of Commons Optical Fibre Networks report, HC 285-I.
• The published framing called for competitive, commercially successful broadband networks supported by private-sector investment.
• It also linked the proposed infrastructure to more proactive public services.

What “Superhighway” Meant in 1994

• The information superhighway was envisaged as a two-way, high-capacity multimedia system, broader than the Internet available to most users at the time.
• Parliamentary material associated the wider vision with entertainment, videophones, teleworking, distance learning, teleshopping and video on demand.
• The Internet was described in the 1994–95 discussion as a limited prototype rather than the full interactive, real-time network being imagined.

A Network as a Public Question

• UK policy discussion connected broadband with competition, regulation, universal service and broadcasting.
• Privacy, security, intellectual-property rights and unlawful material were also treated as questions for a networked society.
• The later Information Society Initiative was launched in 1996 as separate policy activity; the available record does not establish it as Cm 2734’s replacement.

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