A “Broadband summit” is taking place today in London, to talk about ways to get fast broadband out to every part of the UK.
A pledge to make Britain the fastest broadband nation in Europe by 2015 has also been made and that a minimum broadband speed of 2Mb should be available to every home in Britain.
However, the Government are not likely to be offering the broadband industry big pots of money to help fund the roll out, there is still the £175 million left over from the digital switchover that is to be used and since the government scrapped Labours 50p per month “broadband tax” that was to be used to help fund next generation broadband and the fact that as a country we have a huge deficit with money the government can’t afford to start spending.
BT are investing £2.5bn of their own money to fund the roll out of fibre broadband to two thirds of the UK, however they say that around £2bn more will be needed to reach the remaining third of the country. These remaining areas being areas where it is not financially viable for BT to fund the roll out themselves.
The CEO of BT Openreach, Steve Robertson said:
“As a society we need to make our minds up about what is an essential element of our social fabric. Today not having broadband makes people feel deprived.“
The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt said:
“There is currently nothing to stop telecoms or utility companies reaching commercial agreements to share their infrastructure, but very few agreements currently exist.
Before we embark on legislation or start committing scarce public resources, we need to explore these cost-effective ways of achieving our aims so I want to hear from companies about their proposals and willingness to work towards mutually beneficial commercial arrangements.”