The U.K. will have the continent’s fastest broadband by 2015 and profit from a huge amount of economic benefits as a result. Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt told a gathering at Google’s Campus in east London that he will bring high-speed broadband – defined by him as greater than 24 mbps – to over 90 percent of the country by 2015. Hunt has been criticized in the past for focusing entirely on speed and he again reiterated that this is very much at the forefront of the government’s thinking.
“We simply will not have a competitive broadband network unless we recognise the massive growth in demand for higher and higher speeds,” Mr Hunt said. “Today’s superfast is tomorrow’s superslow. Just as the last government was wrong to hang its hat on 2Mbps speeds, we must never fall into the trap of saying any speed is ‘enough’.”
Some of the £300m TV licence fee is being set aside for investment in the high-speed broadband system as consumers are increasingly using the medium to access free-to-air and pay-TV services. It will also mean that more than the 90 percent that has been the long-muted target of Hunt.
The culture secretary also told the gathering that the Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) system of piping broadband into people’s homes will only be a “potential medium-term solution” with Fibre To The Home (FTTH) very much the long-term solution. The funding for that will be provided by “private sector companies”
The roll out of faster broadband, and mobile internet, is something that is continually cited by gambling industry as something that will effect how fast the industry grows in the future. Anything that creates a faster and more accessible network in the UK can only be a good thing for gambling firms.
