A billion here, a billion there
The government was determined to get at least some of its Digital Britain initiatives underway before the general election, and today it announced a new bureaucracy charged with rolling-out next generation broadband and gave it a billion quid to play with.
Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) will apparently drive a commitment to deliver 2 Mbps broadband to every household by 2012. Funny, we thought BT had already pledged that a couple of years ago. It's also in charge of the £1 billion ‘next generation fund' that is earmarked to ensure next generation broadband (no download speed specified) reaches 90 percent of the country by 2017.
Last time we looked, Virgin Media was going to get cracking on a 100 Mbps service by the end of this year, so we must assume the majority of that public cash is going in that direction. Surely, in these impoverished times, the government wouldn't channel a billion of our precious pounds towards BT when Virgin seems to be doing just fine without any public largesse.
Stephen Timms, the Digital Britain minister, is using a government commissioned report called ‘An assessment and practical guidance on next generation access (NGA) risk in the UK' as the basis for state intervention in the broadband market.
"This report makes clear that without public intervention, some rural areas and less well-off communities will be left behind and unable to reap the economic, health and education benefits superfast broadband offers," said Timms.
"Our proposed £1 billion Next Generation Fund will help bring the benefits of super-fast broadband to more communities. We do not want to risk the digital gap widening, which is why we have put a team of experts in place to ensure further investment is targeted at those people without adequate access."
The report reckons only 70 percent of the country will get next gen broadband if it's just left to the markets to sort out. In effect, the report is a lengthy justification of the broadband tax, which will provide the billion notes in question. We have to wonder how much of our money the government spent commissioning a report to rubber-stamp its plan to spend more of our money.
