£200 million to be invested in super fast broadband in rural areas

Many people living in rural broadband-starved areas in the UK will be pleased with recent announcements confirming that the government plans to plough £200 million into super fast broadband in rural areas.

The topic of broadband not-spots has hit the headlines many times recently, and many people in rural areas of the UK have found that they have very limited access to broadband services, and in some cases have no broadband access at all. This is something that the government pledge to deal with when it put together its Digital Britain report, following concerns that people in these areas were at a disadvantage because they could be losing out financially as well as in other ways due to lack of broadband access.

Earlier this year the former Communications Minister Lord Carter was replaced by Stephen Timms, and Timms stated that access to 100Mbps broadband services could provide consumers with huge benefits such as “an array of social, economic and health benefits”. He said that these benefits would be available to both consumers and businesses.

The government has now announced that it is planning to plough an impressive two hundred million pounds into the delivery and rollout of super fast broadband in rural areas, which will come as great news for the many people that are left out in the cold when it comes to broadband access and all of the benefits associated with this access. Furthermore it is thought that a large chunk of this money will go to rural areas in Scotland.

Timms stopped short of breaking down which areas would get how much of the two hundred million pounds, although he did say that Scotland “is delivering innovative ways of connecting people to these superfast networks”. He added: “The Fibrecity initiative is already delivering 100Mb broadband to residents in Dundee via fibre-optic networks beneath the city.”

Source – Infoworld