The UK coalition scraps plans to provide broadband for all Britons by 2012
The former labour government’s plan to provide broadband in every British home by the year 2012 was scrapped yesterday after the coalition was forced to delay the date until 2015, due to poor funding. Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, made a promise that Britain would have the best broadband network in the EU by 2015 but that it would not be possible to guarantee ‘universal’ broadband within the next two years. The coalition is facing a wave of fierce budget cuts, which will have harsh implications on all areas of public spending
Currently, around 160,000 British homes are without broadband and 11 percent contain broadband that is slower than Mbps. Mr Hunt said that the coalition would pledge to provide an extra 200 million pounds to help increase the number of households with broadband – although he stressed that he did not know where this extra funding would be coming from. The government is also investigating the possibility of introducing super-fast 50Mbps broadband services to all of the UK, which is currently available to about 50 percent of UK homes. BT has said that it will try to extend its fibre network to at least 65 percent of all UK households. A BT spokesman said that common problems in accessing broadband in homes included faulty writing or the phone network being overstretched due to the rise in popularity of Smart phones.
The government has begun making consultations with various officials on the best way to bring broadband to those 160,000 homes, including rural regions that will require governmental support in order to be covered. Mr Hunt reiterated the need for a strong government commitment to the initiative, insisting that the broadband network is essential to Britain’s role in the digital age, just as railways were of paramount importance to the industrial revolution. He calls for a ‘market-led’ resolution which will likely involve subsidies, which could include a share of the BBC licensing fee. The head of the BT division Openreach, Steve Robertson explained that public funds of at least two billion pounds would be required for the government’s plans to provide fibre to every UK household, which would also need to be matched by private businesses.
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