Mandelson and Brown speak about digital revolution

The business secretary Lord Mandelson and the Prime Minister Gordon Brown have been discussing intervention to ensure that next generation broadband will be available to all households in the UK.

Last week saw the Business Secretary Lord Mandelson speaking at the Digital Britain Summit in London. Here, Mandelson reiterated that the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, himself, and the Labour government were determine to intervene if necessary to make sure that next generation broadband is made available to all households in the UK.

Current plans that have been put forward by the telecoms industry would only see around fifty percent of the country getting access to next generation broadband, and Mandelson said that this simply wasn’t good enough. Whilst the UK may be technologically ahead of many other countries when it comes to broadband, it is still lagging behind some of the other leading developed countries.

Many officials are now hoping that Mandelson’s talk about intervention means that the government will look at putting aside a special fund to finance the digital revolution in the UK. It is thought that if this is the case then it could be announced in the up and coming budget. Communications giant BT was set to provide the bulk of the finance required through the provision of billions of pounds to create the first nationwide fibre-optic network.

Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, compared the importance of the digital revolution with that of the industrial revolution. He said: ”I do think that the digital revolution lies at the heart of success for Britain in the years to come. Achieving that goal of universal connectivity to broadband will be a critical stepping stone to a digital Britain.”