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Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s culture secretary, pledged £300 million would be used  come the current parliament to ensure Britain’s broadband would be second to none, in Europe, by being ‘the best superfast broadband’ on the continent.

The challenge – rural areas

While people often laud places like Norway and Finland for their deep broadband penetration, what they often overlook is the tight population density in those places. People live so close together that deploying a blanket high speed broadband network is relatively inexpensive. British broadband deployment does not have this luxury, with many locales being remote and many areas quite rural.

In this respect, British ISP providers, or private sector funds, are uneasy about financing this expansion. Hunt is not blind to this, indicating a high priority of his government is to deliver broadband to rural areas, so that government does not ‘open up a new digital divide between the urban areas and rural communities’ with these initiatives.,

Electioneering

British broadband policy was central to the recent election that saw the coalition government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg overthrow Gordon Brown. Differing policies like blanket coverage of at least 2mb per second lines were available throughout the UK, as proposed by the ousted Labour government, which Hunt supported but felt was ‘pitifully unambitious’. Other plans from running parties was to up the average speed of broadband significantly, but in concentrated, population dense and wealthier areas only – leaving those in rural locations in the cold, somewhat.

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Oddly enough, Jeremy Hunt is not once committal to what the minimum speed of this ‘superfast broadband’ network would be, which in its self is rather ‘unambitious’. To use buzzwords to diverge away from the key questions – how fast, how stable, and at what price – does British ISP services and British broadband in general a disservice, as well as the British public, too. People now know enough to ask the right questions, but politicians still don’t volunteer the proper answer.

In addition to Joe Public, British ISP service providers and manufacturers of broadband equipment stand to benefit most from these initiatives, meaning considerable lobbying may occur behind the scenes, too.

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The British Government has proposed a 50p monthly tax on phone lines so that it can fund very fast British broadband nationwide. This, however has been heavily criticised by MPs who feel this will harm the poorest of the poor.

Unscrupulous funding

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This levy, which was included in the Digital Britain bill drawn up last July, is part of government’s plan to raise an estimated £175 million in the interest of providing every home with a minimum 2mbps broadband speed by 2012. A group of MPs, operating under the Business, Skills and Innovation Committee rejected this levy as being ‘regressive tax’ – an economic term for taxation that grows in percentage as income drops.

Competitive Climate

Instead, what the committee calls for is the government fostering and supporting a competitive British broadband marketplace wherein investors and businesses can fund the rollout of high-speed broadband themselves. This would then remove what they call a ‘market distorting’ initiative.

Laudable yet unwise

This multi-party group of MPs says though they find the government’s ambitions ‘laudable’, direct meddling in the market would be ‘unwise’. The committee further recommends employing a minister full time whose primary responsibility would be to encourage investment in this sector.

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The MPs’ concerns can be boiled down to the poor financing a British broadband initiative they themselves would not be able to enjoy and reap the benefits from. In this regard, the group also asks what government means by its somewhat ambiguous 2mbps British broadband speed. The MPs suggest, that at an absolute minimum and under normal circumstances, that every home should have 2mbps Internet at all times. The Digital Britain bill has elicited passionate responses from stakeholders everywhere, from government to big business and ISPs. Widespread high-speed broadband in Britain is an inevitability. Whether evryone will have access to it remains to be seen.