Government doles out £363m in broadband grants

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 16 Aug 2011 at 09:03

The Government has finally allocated a large portion of the half-billion pounds it has set aside to boost broadband across the UK.

Last year, the Government promised £530 million from the BBC's digital switchover fund to pay for improving broadband, but until this week had only doled out funds to a few projects.

Now, it has announced plans to hand over £363m. Of that, £294.8m is being handed to 42 projects in England and the remaining £68.8m to Scotland. Northern Ireland announced yesterday it is to receive £4.4m to cover the last 3% without at least 2Mbits/sec connections.

The Government's goal is to ensure everyone in the UK has at least 2Mbits/sec, with 90% on "superfast connections", previously defined as 25Mbits/sec.

I urge all those suffering the frustration of slow internet connections to make it clear to your local elected representatives that you expect them to do what is needed to access this investment and to deliver broadband to your community

The money handed to English local authorities ranges from £630,000 in the West Midlands to more than £31m given to Devon and Somerset. With previous funding allocations, councils were not given all the funds requested - Wiltshire Council was handed a tenth of what it asked for - so it's likely some won't be happy with their piece of the £530m pie.

"The allocations today are based on need - the Government has looked at the areas where the market will fail to deliver superfast broadband to enough premises on its own, and the cost of that," the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said in a statement. "It is not based on the number of people living or working in a county."

The DCMS noted three areas didn't receive funding: Greater London, as it is presumed to be covered by the private sector; Cornwall, as it is apparently covered by a BT project; and South Yorkshire, which is covered by its own Digital Region rollout.

The Government believes the private sector will roll out superfast broadband to two-thirds of the country without public help, but Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt still believed the latest allocations of funding wouldn't be enough, and called for people not to "suffer in silence" and push local authorities to "do their bit".

"I urge all those suffering the frustration of slow internet connections to make it clear to your local elected representatives that you expect them to do what is needed to access this investment and to deliver broadband to your community," Hunt said.

The full list of English councils to get funding is here; Scotland will decide separately how to spend its grant.