Government broadband plans delayed

The Government has delayed the promise of a minimum 2 Mbits/sec broadband service across the entire country until 2015.

Jeremy Hunt, UK culture secretary said today that although the government still supported the goal, he is not convinced sufficient funding is in place to put the infrastructure to support the promised universal service obligation in place.

Labour’s original plans to fund this rollout were to use the excess money of around £250 m from the digital switchover pot.
“While we will keep working towards that date, we have set ourselves a more realistic target of achieving universal 2 Mbits/sec access within the lifetime of this Parliament.

He said that from today Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) is to launch a research exercise to explore how barriers to providing a basic level of broadband to the mainly rural communities can be overcome.

Broadband providers have been asked to examine some real-life examples and suggest innovative solutions that would work across a number of situations.

He also spoke about the importance of next generation access where internet service providers can offer speeds of up to 100 Mbits/sec and higher.

He said Government did have a part to play in supporting this rollout to areas that would not be commercially viable, but mentioned nothing about funding.

“All of us share the ambition that, by the end of this Parliament, this country should have the best superfast broadband in Europe and be up there with the very best in the world,” he said.

However Steve Robertson, chief executive of BT Openreach said that if the Government wanted every home in the UK to have access to fibre broadband (as o pposed to copper broadband which is already ubiquitous), public funds would be required.