Labour and Conservative reveal road maps for Digital Britain
In their recently issued official manifestos for the nearing general election, UK’s major parties, Labour and Conservative change some of their earlier plans for Digital Britian and come out with their own road maps for extending super-fast broadband infrastructure across the country.
The Labour which passed Digital Economy Bill last week without the controversial 50p broadband tax, confirms its earlier commitment to providing faster broadband access for all UK homes and businesses and also makes it clear that it will go on with its proposals of funding the rural broadband infrastructure projects with ‘a modest levy on fixed telephone lines.’
For the first time, the importance of satellite and mobile broadband got a mention in Labour’s manifesto, as it hopes that these alternative technologies will help the high-speed broadband rollout to reach ‘the final ten per cent.’
Labour party, if they win the election, plan to provide a minimum 2Mbps broadband for all UK households by 2012. The manifesto also promises fibre based, next generation broadband networks to be built in the next seven years, with the help of market-led private investments and public funds of £1 billion (largely generated from broadband tax).
Despite the scrapping of Labour’s landline tax and opening up BT’s fibre networks to other providers to extend the next generation broadband reach across the country get restated in their manifesto, Tories (Conservatives) do not give a time-frame for the superfast broadband rollout just as they promised 100Mbps broadband for most UK homes by 2017 a couple of weeks ago.
Tories also confirm that a part of the BBC licence fee may be used to fund broadband projects in areas which are considered ‘economically not viable’ by the ISPs. The Conservative manifesto also says that their government would encourage local Councils and businesses to enter ‘regionally-based enterprise partnerships’ to extend super-fast broadband coverage to more homes and businesses in the region.
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