UK would need to spend billions to bring broadband to rural areas

An industry expert has recently warned that following the recent budget announcements from the Chancellor the cost of provider high-speed broadband to the more remote areas of the country could cost the UK billions of pounds in investment.

It emerged recently that the cost of providing the more rural and remote areas of the UK with access to affordable broadband connectivity at high-speeds could cost the British taxpayer billions of pounds.

The pledge that had been made in the Digital Britain report, which pledged that by 2012 every home in the country would be provided with broadband connections running at a minimum of 2Mbps, was affirmed recently in the Budget statement made by the Chancellor, Alistair Darling.

Matt Warman, a technology journalist wrote in the Daily Telegraph warning that billions of pounds would be needed to enable the government to connect every consumer living in the UK with a fixed network broadband connection.

There would be a serious risk of the current digital divide in the UK becoming wider and this would mainly be due to the cost involved in the deployment of fibre network cabling to the more rural areas of the country where the existing broadband infrastructure might be limited.

The strain on the public purse in having to get the government involved in this roll out would by massive and it would be likely of the private sector were to refuse to bear the cost of the investment.

An important factor in reaching the remote and rural area without the huge cost would, however, be the use of either mobile broadband technology or satellite service providers.

South Yorkshire has recently announced a £100 million Digital Region project, which will boost the deployment of a next-generation broadband infrastructure.