Government promises universal superfast broadband by 2015
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has promised to set aside £830m of public money in order to facilitate the roll out of next generation broadband services throughout the UK by 2015.
The move is seen as essential by experts to combat digital inequality by connecting rural areas which are presently lumbered with patchy or slow services.
Charlie Ponsonby, chief executive of SimplifyDigital, said that the long term aims of the plan were “ambitious” but warned that with delivery targets now being pushed back people would have to continue to persevere with slow speeds in the short term.
BT will benefit most from the subsidies but will be obliged to open up its network of ducts and poles to rival operators and service providers.
Dragons Den panellist Doug Richard was unimpressed by the plans however, he said: “True broadband in not one megabit of information trickling to some of our homes, it’s one gigabit to every doorstep in this country… This announcement is a signal failure to accomplish that.”