The UK Governemnt is ready to plough-in £530m to the broadband infrastructure and give life to the areas of the country that have no broadband.
It is hoped that everyone will be connected to a bare minimum of 2mbps from Cornish fishing villages, Welsh valleys and Cumbrian farmsteads within four years if telecoms companies add their money to the state pot and consumers show interest.
The money, diverted from the BBC to create a digital Britain, will be shared among 40 areas including English councils, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A further £300m has been promised after 2015.
The government wants all 25m UK homes to have access to a minimum speed of 2Mbps (megabits per second), which would mean that reading web pages, making Skype phone calls or watching TV catch-up services, such as the BBC’s iPlayer, will all be possible from the most remote cottage. If all goes to plan, 90% of homes will be able to get even faster speeds of over 24Mbps, enough for several computers to download video simultaneously on a single line.
British Telecom has already promised to spend its own funds on getting superfast, fibre-optic broadband to two thirds of households by 2015, without government help. This will cover the towns and cities, where BT can quickly recoup its £2.5bn investment. It’s well known that getting broadband to those villages and valleys will be less economical, however, with lines having to stretch longer distances to reach fewer people. So will the two tranches of public subsidy, totalling £830m, be enough to reach the final third?
