Go Gadget News » Investment

Government confirms £230m broadband investment

October 18, 2010 – 2:45 pm

With the governments spending review due to be released on Wednesday, setting out the four year plan of how public spending will be focused (cut), it comes as good news that George Osborne has set out plans to help keep investment going to broadband.

The government have decided not to cut back on the digital switch-over underspend which was promised to be used as investment into faster broadband services, and £230m will be used to help 2 million homes in rural areas get access to better broadband speeds by 2015. Thankfully, the Chancellor sees broadband as a way to invest in the future, making the country stronger further down the line.

The next big step is to ensure that this funding is spent wisely, and that will largely come down to Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), a department set up within the department for Business, Innovation and Skills. One of their aims is to ensure that through an efficient use of funding, the country can deliver the best superfast broadband in Europe, including to rural areas.

Private industry has already shown that next-generation broadband to rural areas, often referred to as the ‘final third’ can work, particularly with community involvement (for example, Rutland Telecom’s fibre deployment in Lyddington). With central government pushing the idea of ‘Big Society’, an idea to encourage people to get more involved in their communities, some joined up thinking from BDUK could help nurture this idea and save money in the process of helping to deliver vital broadband services to areas that need it.

Article: RSS via: ThinkBroadband

Tags: Broadband, George Osborne, Investment, UK Government

Posted in Broadband | No Comments »

Broadband billion dollar plan unveiled by Obama

July 12, 2010 – 1:22 pm

More than a year after Congress passed the economic stimulus package, President Barack Obama announced that $795 million of that money will go toward expanding Internet access across the country to provide jobs and improve communication.

Obama’s plan, announced Friday, will allocate more than $1 billion for installing broadband Internet across the country.

About $800 million of that will come from the tax-sponsored stimulus package, while the rest comes from outside investment.

“We’re competing aggressively to make sure the jobs and industries and the markets of tomorrow take root right here in the United States,” the president said. “We’re moving forward. And to every American who is looking for work, I promise you, we are going to keep on doing everything that we can.”

The plan will create 66 infrastructure projects across the country and more than 5,000 temporary jobs, Obama said. It also will benefit more than 685,000 businesses, 900 health care facilities and 2,400 schools.

The money is part of $7.2 billion in the stimulus that was set aside to expand broadband Internet access.

While the president emphasized job creation Friday in his Internet proposal, he also described new statistics on employment for June as the sixth straight month of job growth despite the phasing out of census jobs.

Economists, however, see the June jobs data as disappointing for their small increase in private-sector jobs and a larger-than-expected increase in discouraged jobless who dropped out of the job market. Total U.S. payrolls were down by 125,000 jobs in June, but the private sector expanded by 83,000 jobs.

“We are headed in the right direction,” the president said. “But, as I was reminded on a trip to Racine, Wisconsin, earlier this week, we’re not headed there fast enough for a lot of Americans.”

The state that’s slated to get the most money under the plan is Iowa, which will receive about $90 million (although it will share about $20 million of that with Missouri), almost double what the second-ranked state, Georgia, is to receive.

Obama highlighted how the broadband allocation will benefit education, the environment and doctor-patient communication.

“Recovery Act broadband projects help bring down the cost of private investment, attract Internet service providers to new areas, improve digital literacy among students and workers, and help create new opportunities in employment, education and entrepreneurship by wiring homes and businesses,” according to an analysis that the National Economic Council released last year.

The stimulus package, enacted in February 2009, allocated $787 billion to create jobs, increase cash flow and revitalize the economy amid the recession. Only three Republicans in Congress voted for the measure.

On Monday, the president announced a separate plan to increase spectrum levels in order to make wireless broadband connection to the Internet more accessible.

“Once we emerge from the immediate crisis, the long-term economic gains to communities that have been left behind in a digital age will be immeasurable,” the president said Friday.