By Ben King, 19 March 2002 17:26
NEWS E-minister Douglas Alexander has announced how the government's £30m aid package for broadband Britain will be doled out. The money will be spent on wiring up business parks in Yorkshire and Humberside with broadband, a trial of wireless and satellite broadband in the East Midlands, and reduced-price connections for some users in the South-East. Buckfastleigh, the Devon town famous for the Buckfast fortified wine, will become a showcase for broadband, with the school, health centre, town hall and library all connected to broadband. Finally, in the east of England, there will be a "connecting communities" competition, for which the prizes will be free broadband. This is at least the third time this dollop of money has been trumpeted - it appeared first in a speech of Patricia Hewitt's in February 2001. It was then allocated to the regions in October 2001 and doubtless this won't be the last we hear of it. Some of the initiatives are slightly mystifying. The projects are partly designed simply to raise awareness, and they may do this. But why government money should be spent trialling satellite broadband when the commercial sector seems to be able to provide this quite successfully is anyone's guess. Now BT has brought the price of DSL down below the £30 "sweet spot" widely seen as essential for widespread acceptance of the technology by consumers, the main problem which 'broadband Britain' now faces is getting broadband to the 40 per cent of UK households that DSL doesn't currently cover. The Buckfastleigh project seems to be the most sensible of these proposals for addressing this problem. The idea is to get public sector bodies in small market towns to bundle their demand for broadband together into a single contract large enough to make it worthwhile to a commercial provider to install broadband links to that area. Similar projects are being trialled in Scotland already, and the Office of Government Commerce is considering expanding the scheme to the rest of the UK.
In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in.
Log in or create your silicon.com account below