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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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David Cameron is Britain’s new Prime Minister, and while one imagines he, his family and his party are still celebrating, it’s time to get to work. And the first thing on the agenda from our side is that digital economy Bill.

Digital economy bill review

For those who don’t know about this digital economy bill, you can go here and here and here for full details. But, to summarise it, essentially the British government has passed a bill that will allow the government to both ban individual users who are suspected of copyright infringement, as well as have all British ISPs block sites it deems as enablers of copyright infringement. Under that definition, even a site like Google could be blocked. As we imagine you’ve noticed, that’s the beginning of the trail down the slippery road to wholesale Chinese internet censorship. Not Good.

Sorry, Lib Dems. We tried

During their election campaign, the Liberal Democrats said that if they were voted into office, they would have the Digital Economy Bill repealed and rethought. For this reason, we immediately petitioned our readers – yes, you included – into voting for them. Clearly that didn’t work and with a heavy heart, we bid farewell to Mr. Clegg’s aspirations. But David Cameron, oh David Cameron, will he hear from us, starting right now.

The requests (no, demands)

Though, in this video, Cameron tries to come across as being indifferent to parts of the bill and in support of other parts of the bill, do not be fooled, he is well on board. And the excuse that it is to protect the music and film industry is a red herring for exerting greater control on how people use the net, which is the equivalent of controlling a big portion of how people live.

Our only request (read: demand) is that the David Cameron and his new team actually debate the Digital Economy Bill. And, for a change, not try paint it as something it is not.

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll mend from the pain of not getting the Lib Dems into 10 Downing Street. And maybe you’ll outlast Gordan Brown’s decidedly short tenure, too.