Government pledges extra ?50m for fibre optic hubs
The UK broadband saga continues, as news has recently come in that the government will be pledging an extra ?50 million, on top of the ?830m already set aside for the plan titled "Britain's Superfast Broadband Future" - a mission to get UK-wide superfast broadband coverage by 2015.
This extra 50 million is to go towards projects in North Yorkshire, Herefordshire, Cumbria and the Highlands and Islands in Scotland.
The upshot of this, according to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, will be that every area in the UK will be hooked up to a "digital hub" through the laying of fibre optic broadband connections - replacing the older copper lines.
This replacement has been the subject of much debate of late, as BT controls much of the infrastructure (poles and ducts) that need to be utilised in order to implement the change in systems. And as some reports suggest, this new plan does not address some of the concerns that other companies have over the differences in the way that BT is assessed by Ofcom - BT is able to stop rivals from providing services to businesses, if they happen to use BT's infrastructure. There are also disagreements in the way BT is charged compared to small companies.
Currently the UK is lagging way behind other nations in terms of fibre-optic broadband connection, with only 0.2 per cent of UK households hooked up, as opposed to 12 per cent in Sweden and 34 per cent in Japan - Japan being top of the pile.
Tags: Online Broadband BT Digital Britain Ofcom
Superfast broadband UK-wide by 2015 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 06 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000
Chloë Sevigny Janet Jackson Georgianna Robertson Reese Witherspoon Jordana Brewster
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