As part of Chancellor George Osborne’s budget this week, he announced a £150 million pot that would go towards improving internet access across the UK, especially for those within ten “super-connected” cities – London, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle. His hope is that this investment will help make the UK Europe’s technology hub.
The fund is split into £100 million for the super-connections, with the aim of providing 100Mbps connections throughout those city areas, hoping to have these services on offer to 3 million people within the next three years. Pushing the speed up to 100Mbps would be a huge improvement for most Londoners, where the average connection speed was just 8.8Mbps on average last year according to OFCOM’s broadband speed test – and that average included those on Virgin Media where the speeds are much higher than those offered on ADSL.
If the UK is going to lead the digital revolution and set herself up as the technology hub of Europe, we need countrywide faster broadband now – and any investment from the UK government or the EU is very much welcomed.