New
#1
wow! congrats to those living in England...
UK Government launches new £5bn Project Gigabit
- First areas to benefit from £5bn government funding for fastest broadband connections to help recovery from the pandemic, growth and levelling up
- Extra £210m worth of vouchers released to help those with slow speeds
- £110m to connect up to 7,000 rural GP surgeries, libraries and schools
- Call for evidence on using satellite and 5G technology to connect very hard to reach areas
-
-
New #2
UK broadband prices are ridiculous e.g. Virgin Media. I'd be happier with half the speed for half the price.
-
-
New #4
-
New #5
Most cities in the UK already have these speeds, where I am with my preferred provider 1000/100 would cost £62.99 ($87) p/m.
-
-
-
New #8
Hi there
Be careful of using the '%' sign in any sort of statistics without understanding the whole dataset(s) you are dealing with.
Unlike a lot of other countries most of the population in the UK is totally concentrated in approx 4 cities : London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool - so presumably just ensuring a lot of households in those areas get Broadband that implies half the households will have it - but a lot won't have it or even be capable of getting it for years (if ever).
My experience over the years is that it really doesn't matter what country you are in -- on these sorts of projects Govts and Politicians can trumpet what they like (especially I think in the UK currently where there's a set of important elections coming up shortly) but announcing this type of stuff before elections and actually delivering it are two very different things. Good Luck if it can be done within the period (and especially within Budget) but I doubt it somehow. Govts world wide don't have enviable track records of delivering these sorts of projects on time and within budget. No Politics intended -- just plain facts which can be checked easily enough by observation.
Also if you are say running a business that needs high speed internet -- what good is a voucher if you have low speeds --you might just as well offer people Carrier Pidgeons.
Sorry folks - I'm always cynical of any Govt anywhere making grandiose big infrastructure announcements - usually big megabuck programs that overrun and cost vastly more -- I think UK people can understand HS2, Crossrail, Hinkley Point Nuclear Power station , Heathrow Airport 3rd Runway, etc etc so they should really be sceptical of this.
Cheers
jimbo
-
UK Government launches new £5bn Project Gigabit
Posted: 20 Apr 2021
More than one million hard to reach homes and businesses will have next generation gigabit broadband built to them in the first phase of a £5 billion government infrastructure project.
Up to 510,000 homes and businesses in Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Tees Valley will be the first to benefit as part of ‘Project Gigabit’.
Project Gigabit
Their available speeds will rocket to more than 1,000 megabits or one gigabit per second. It means families no longer having to battle over bandwidth and will give people in rural areas the freedom to live and work more flexibly. Contracts for these first areas will go to tender in the spring with spades in the ground in the first half of 2022.
In June the government expects to announce the next procurements to connect up to 640,000 premises in Norfolk, Shropshire, Suffolk, Worcestershire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
The government-funded projects will prioritise areas that currently have slow connections and which would otherwise have been left behind in broadband companies’ rollout plans.
Gigabit broadband is being rolled out rapidly - from one in ten households in 2019 to almost two in five today. The UK is on track for one of the fastest rollouts in Europe and for half of all households to have access to gigabit speeds by the end of this year.
Project Gigabit will accelerate our recovery from covid, fire up high growth sectors like tech and the creative industries and level up the country, spreading wealth and creating jobs the breadth of Britain.
The successful Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme is also being relaunched with up to £210 million to give people in eligible rural areas immediate financial help to get gigabit speeds.
On top of this the government is making up to £110 million available to connect public sector buildings - such as GP surgeries, libraries and schools - in the hardest to reach parts of the UK with this revolutionary infrastructure.
Read more: Government launches new lb5bn ‘Project Gigabit’ - GOV.UK
Quote
Related Discussions
