Funding guidelines for broadband to be introduced

In order to help foster more consistent and coherent practices, guidelines for the state funding of broadband projects within the 27 European Union country has now been set out by the European Commission.

A guide has been put together that will explain how public funds can be used in areas where investments are not being made by operators, to help assist in the roll out of both Next Generation Access (NGA) Networks such as fibre-to-the-home and regular broadband networks. These guidelines have been created from more than 40 individual decisions made over state aid for broadband in member states.

In a recent statement the Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes said “The Guidelines offer Member States and public authorities a comprehensive and transparent tool to ensure that their plans for state funding of broadband are compliant with the EU’s state aid rules. The Guidelines will therefore facilitate the widespread roll out of high speed and very high speed broadband networks, enhancing European competitiveness and helping to build a knowledge-based society in Europe.”

Any state funding given must be used for the creation of an open-access network was one of the main points covered by the guide, which means that the providing and selling of broadband services must be made available to all network operators.

The guidelines may, however, cause problems that were not seen, one of which is the suggestions made by the Digital Britain report to fund access to broadband in remote or rural areas by charging a 50p levy on all telephone lines, which was known as the ‘Carter Tax’. To offer a service that would provide broadband speeds a roll out of mobile broadband based technology to mobile phone masts was one of the options considered. Using an ‘open-access’ model would require the sharing of the radio network and would mean serious work, which would make it difficult to provide.

Source – Think Broadband