Britain Promises Broadband Access For All
While US lawmakers hew and haw over providing Internet expansion tax
credits to telecommunications outfits willing to bring broadband to the
outback, British officials are doing them one better. Believe it or
not, every last home in Britain will be "guaranteed access to broadband
Internet under plans unveiled by the government on Thursday," which
reportedly placed Internet access on par with telephones as "essential
services."
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham told lawmakers in the House of Commons: "We are developing plans to move towards an historic universal service commitment for broadband and digital services." We're forced to look all the way back to 1840 in order to find something similar for comparison, as that year universal service obligations were used to promise each Briton access to postal services. Of course, you could just peek back to 1984 when another USO was used to ensure every citizen had access to a phone, but at any rate, it's easy to see just how rare such a movement is.
The British government is
wrapping this initiative in with another: to upgrade its radio signals
from analog to digital before the world places its eyes on London during
the 2012 Olympic Games. Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that "digital
technology would be as important to Britain's prosperity in the 21st
economy as roads, bridges, trains and electricity were in the 20th
century," and truthfully, we can't find a good reason to argue.
A final report that outlines the unquestionably gigantic plan is expected to surface later this year, and you can bet that other nations will be peering over each and every page as they too ponder the eventual ubiquity of Internet in their own lands. Who knows -- maybe one day WiFi routers really will be as plentiful as CCTV cameras are in the UK.
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham told lawmakers in the House of Commons: "We are developing plans to move towards an historic universal service commitment for broadband and digital services." We're forced to look all the way back to 1840 in order to find something similar for comparison, as that year universal service obligations were used to promise each Briton access to postal services. Of course, you could just peek back to 1984 when another USO was used to ensure every citizen had access to a phone, but at any rate, it's easy to see just how rare such a movement is.
The British government is
wrapping this initiative in with another: to upgrade its radio signals
from analog to digital before the world places its eyes on London during
the 2012 Olympic Games. Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that "digital
technology would be as important to Britain's prosperity in the 21st
economy as roads, bridges, trains and electricity were in the 20th
century," and truthfully, we can't find a good reason to argue. A final report that outlines the unquestionably gigantic plan is expected to surface later this year, and you can bet that other nations will be peering over each and every page as they too ponder the eventual ubiquity of Internet in their own lands. Who knows -- maybe one day WiFi routers really will be as plentiful as CCTV cameras are in the UK.
