Tony Blair has promised to invest more than a £1 billion of Government money in broadband technology in a bid to stimulate internet usage in the UK.
Speaking at the E-Summit in London, the prime minister said that £6 billion would be spent on IT in the next three years partly to ensure that schools, universities, hospitals and doctor’s surgeries all had high-speed access to the web.
He also quoted a new report which showed that the UK was the second best place in the world to do e-business after the US. However, despite the efforts of service providers and central government, businesses and consumers have been slow to pick up on the benefits of broadband.
The Government has already committed itself to making the UK the G7 broadband leader by 2005. However, the country currently lags behind many of its European partners and Martin Stevenson of Jupiter Research recently described the objective as “completely unrealistic” given the current market situation (see Public Apathy Over Broadband Persists, Says Jupiter).
In the last six months, marketing and price promotion efforts by the leading ISPs have borne fruit but even now less than 10% of internet connections in the UK are made via broadband (see Insight Analysis: Broadband Britain – A Progress Report). “We’re doing well, but not well enough,” Blair admitted. “Access to this technology has to be universal.”
The prime minister emphasised that e-commerce minister Stephen Timms would orchestrate a campaign to push broadband in rural areas. He also called for greater competition to ensure fair pricing and a quality end product.
“If we want broadband to work for businesses and consumers it has to be available at the right price on the basis of a world class service,” he said.
