来源：《每日电讯报》
原文刊登日期：2021年2月12日
文章结构
一二段：英国光纤宽带普及率不高，但政府却削减了这方面的投资。
三四五段：光纤宽带对疫情后经济复苏的重要意义。
六七段：英国的网速在世界上已经落后，政府必须作出改革，引导电信企业投资光纤宽带建设。
Something that is absolutely essential to our economic recovery is faster broadband. More than 50 per cent of French premises have access to a full fibre line; the UK figure is less than one in five.
对我们的经济复苏至关重要的是更快的宽带。超过50%的法国营业场所可以使用全光纤线路；而英国的这一数字不到五分之一。
Boris Johnson’s original ambition of full fibre access for everyone has been downgraded to ensuring almost all businesses and homes have gigabit broadband by 2025. A spending commitment to help rural broadband also appears to have been cut from £5 billion to £1.2 billion.
鲍里斯•约翰逊最初的目标是让每个人都能接入全光纤，但现在已降为确保到2025年几乎所有企业和家庭都能接入千兆宽带。帮助农村宽带的支出承诺似乎也从50亿英镑削减到了12亿英镑。
Critics call this a false economy: the coronavirus pandemic has probably concentrated a decade of economic change in a year, and the growing importance of internet coverage is now inescapable.
批评人士称减少网络基础设施投资是一种假节约：冠状大流行很可能将十年的经济变化集中在一年内，互联网覆盖的重要性日益增强，现在已不可避免。
Millions have been expected to work from home, even to homeschool their children, yet it cannot be done with interminably low internet speeds.
数以百万计的人被期望在家工作，甚至在家教育他们的孩子，然而这不能在无休止的低网速下完成。
Without the suitable infrastructure in place, we risk crippling the economic recovery – asking the individual to adjust to a brave new world while denying them the tools to do so, and accelerating the divide between urban and rural people. This does not square with the “levelling up” agenda.
如果没有适当的基础设施，我们就有可能破坏经济复苏——要求个人适应一个美丽新世界，却不给他们提供相应的工具，并加速城乡人民之间的分化。这与“均衡发展”议程不相符。
Britain used to be a leader in infrastructure, from the first railways to Royal Mail, but now we are slipping down the international rankings. Out of 221 countries surveyed last year for broadband speeds, we were placed 47th, down 13 places since 2019.
从第一条铁路到皇家邮政，英国曾经在基础设施建设方面处于领先地位，但现在我们的国际排名正在下滑。在去年对221个国家的宽带速度进行的调查中，我们排在第47位，自2019年以来下降了13位。
The Government has to put more energy into reversing the slide, which must mean urgent consideration of tax and regulation reform, to help the telecommunications companies direct money towards investment in fibre.
政府必须投入更多精力扭转下滑趋势，这意味着必须立即考虑税收和监管改革，以帮助电信公司将资金投向光纤投资。