Little confidence in Brown's plans for broadband future

A recent vote from IT heads has shown that the majority have little confidence in the plans that Gordon Brown has outlined for the future of UK broadband.

Over recent weeks the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has made it clear that he feels that advancing broadband networks in the UK would be an effective way to ease the economic turmoil, increase jobs within the UK, and get the country out of the ongoing recession more quickly and easily, and this is an opinion that has been mirrored by opposition party leader, David Cameron.

However, in a recent vote by heads of IT in the latest Silicon.com CIO Jury, it was revealed that the majority of the voters were not confident that the plans of the Prime Minister would necessarily help to boost the economy in the way in which he and Cameron believe that it will. In fact, jurors voted eleven to one against the likelihood of a massive cash injection into the broadband infrastructure in the UK doing anything significant to help economic growth.

Although most did not think that the economy would benefit to the level that Mr Brown thinks it will, they did think that investment in UK broadband was still a good and necessary step to take. One official said: “This will not kick-start the economy into growth. However, upgrading the telecoms infrastructure is a good thing and I suppose this will create some jobs temporarily for people to put cables in the ground.”

He added: “If, as a result of this, better homeworking and small business operation is possible at lower costs – i.e. connectivity becomes less asymmetric and upload speeds are improved – we should see some practical benefits. Increasing download bandwidth without addressing the return path would be very short-sighted.”