Superfast broadband plans get £50m government boost

At the end of last year the Government committed £830 million of public money over the next seven years to ensure superfast broadband connections will be installed in every community, including those worst served at the moment in rural areas, across Britain by 2015.

Today’s announcement marks the beginning stages of this investment, which will see the Government spend £530 million over the next four years on rolling out high speed internet to areas where the market alone would not reach. A further £300 million from the TV licence fee has been commited for post 2015 work.

Speaking today in Bristol, where the Chancellor has been visiting technology company Hewlett Packard, Mr Osborne said: “"Broadband is crucial for the country’s economic future; that’s why the coalition Government is investing over half a billion pounds in its infrastructure.

“We want to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015 and today’s £50m will benefit up to 800,000 homes and businesses. This is very much a locally-driven process and we encourage bids from all local people with plans for improving broadband in their local area. "

Local Public Authorities will have to apply to the Government body, Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), and qualify for funding in order to improve broadband in their area.

Last December Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, announced the new strategy, called “Britain’s Superfast Broadband Future’, committing £830 million of public money to the project, and revealed that BT will match all funding it receives with its own investment.

The "fibre" upgrades will allow internet service providers to routinely offer packages with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (mbps).

They should also make advanced services such as movie downloads and television streaming a possibility for 85 to 90 per cent of the country.

The Government claims that the internet upgrade will herald an age of “simpler, more convenient and more personalised” public services.

Mr Hunt said at the end of last year that local authorities would be responsible for developing broadband strategies for individual areas and that the Government hopes that they will encourage businesses to invest in the new network as well.

The Government also hopes that the new strategy will see "telephone cabinets" on every street connected by high-speed fibre-optic cables to the nearest exchange.

Local communities will then be responsible for how each household is connected, but the plan will represent a major upgrade of Britain’s network and allow existing copper cables to deliver much higher speeds.

Communications regulator Ofcom has said that although Britain had good plans for new networks, it currently lagged badly behind the rest of the Europe and the world.

Just 0.2 per cent of the country currently has access to superfast fixed broadband networks.