Government appeals to communications providers for broadband ideas
The government is to hold a summit this week to discuss ways of improving the UK’s broadband access, with culture secretary Jeremy Hunt petitioning communications providers for ideas on how to provide basic broadband to every home.
As well as looking to tackle Britain's broadband divide, the conference in London this Thursday will seek to address the issue of availability to super-fast broadband, as at present millions of homes and small businesses, in rural areas in particular, are excluded from fibre-optic based networks.
The government is committed to providing the entire country with a high-speed connection of at least 2Mbps by 2012, as at present, despite BT's broadband network covering 99% of the population, technical limitations mean 2 million homes cannot get 2Mbps and 160,000 homes are unable to get a broadband connection at all.
The dilemma faced by Hunt is how to convince communications providers to build commercially unviable networks in rural areas in the current financial climate. Thursday's summit will explore how subsidies can be used to provide an incentive to commercial companies to invest in such a project.