Broadband policy will be announced before Christmas

It has been announced that the coalition government will announce its policy regarding broadband before Christmas, and will outline its plans regarding delivery of broadband in all UK homes.

The government has announced that its policy regarding the delivery of broadband across the UK will be announced before Christmas. The announcement was made by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. The policy will address the delivery of broadband to all homes in the UK, and will look at the issue of how to address homes where there is no broadband access or no access to broadband at reasonable speeds.

Hunt told the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee: “There are 160,000 homes-predominantly in rural and remote areas-that do not have access to broadband at all. There are over 9 million adults who have never used the internet, as compared with 30 million who use it every day. So it is a very important tool of social policy.”

He also said that the broadband policy was an extremely vital one because of the way in which it would affect the economy, adding: “We are doing everything we can because our broadband policy is one of the most important things that we will be doing, as a department to contribute to the government’s economic growth strategy.”

The coalition government has stated that it aims to deliver broadband with speeds of least 2Mbps to all UK households by the end of the current parliament in 2015. This was revised from an original delivery date of 2012, which was set by the former Labour government.

Source – Public Service