Gordon Brown pledges that the Labour Party will offer super-fast broadband to all by 2020 should they remain in power.
The Prime Minister is to promise super-fast broadband for all at a speech this week on the proposed Digital Economy Bill and is set to refer to fast internet access as "the electricity of the digital age" which "must be for all - not just for some."
Brown is set to warn of a "new digital divide" if super-fast broadband access is left to the free market to decide.
Brown is set to say the following: "We can allow the market to provide a solution on its own terms and according to its own timetable.
"The result would be super-fast broadband coverage determined not by need or by social justice, but by profitability. The alternative is our vision: ensuring, not simply hoping for, universal coverage."
Offering incentives
Jim Knight, the minister responsible for digital inclusion, told BBC Radio 5 live: "You offer incentives to the market to get to those areas that otherwise they're not going to be able to make a profit out of going to.
"By having universal access to this very high bandwidth which allows more streaming video, allows people to watch TV and listen to radio online, it means that we can also release the business and employment potential of this.
"If you just leave it up to the market it'll only go to into the cities, it won't get out into rural Cornwall for example without some form of public subsidy."
The government is still planning a 50p-a-month levy on landlines to ensure rural areas get equal broadband access in the long run.
Via BBC
Your comments (8) Click to add a new comment
windymiller
March 23rd 2010
8. @ scottgilbert
Go on, I'll give you it.
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scottgilbert
March 22nd 2010
7. will do windymiller, but i thought it was quite funny since it is actually copied from Luke 9:10-17
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windymiller
March 22nd 2010
6. "Now can someone kick my chair from under me please?"
I'll do it if it will stop you boring the cr@p out of me.
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scottgilbert
March 22nd 2010
5. 4, u r rite
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/history/taxhis1.htm
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/history/taxhis7.htm
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awire
March 22nd 2010
4. hmmm, i believe the Income tax was designed to help fund the war against france and we still have it nearly 200 years later.
This is another tax that will never go away.
I'm all for helping all brits to achieve a decent speed of broadband but when will it stop? In 200 years time unless we have removed the need for money i bet that we will still be paying this TAX.
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scottgilbert
March 22nd 2010
3. When this man, charismatic man, whose face betrays no lies talk, don't you want to believe and vote for him.... GORDON BROWN is the new MESSIAH, the miracles he has performed for his banker friends,
Gordon 10:3-22
The apostles, when they had returned, told him what things they had done.
He took them, and withdrew apart to a deserted place of a city called London.
But the bankers, perceiving it, followed him.
He welcomed them, and spoke to them of the Kingdom of Gordon, and he bought those who needed PPI.
The day began to wear away; and the twelve came, and said to him, "Send the bankers away, that they may go into the surrounding villages and farms, and lodge, and take all their food, clothes and then homes, for we are here in a deserted place."
But he said to them, "You give them some money so they can continue to buy helicopters."
They said, "We have no more than five hedge funds and two large debts, unless we should go and buy the luxury goods for all these people."
For they were about five thousand bankers.
He said to his disciples, "Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each."
They did so, and made them all sit down.
He took the five hedge funds and the two large debts, and looking up to the sky, he blessed them, and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the bankers.
They ate, and were all filled.
What does this reveal about Gordon?
That he can create something out of nothing.
An application:
In doing ministry we need not be overly concerned about how little we have.
We just need to share our five hedge funds and two large debts we've given to the Lord and let Gordon do the rest.
Now can someone kick my chair from under me please?
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lew247
March 22nd 2010
2. "the proposed Digital Economy Bill and is set to refer to fast internet access as "the electricity of the digital age" which "must be for all - not just for some."
How does that comment fit into the proposal to cut file sharers off?
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hu_the_fox_hat
March 22nd 2010
1. Hardly a noteworthy pledge is it? the fastest most people could get was 56k dial-up at the start of the millenium, it's 10 years on and now you can easily get 5mb as standard. it's not hard to figure out that 50mb will be acheivable in a further 10 years.
Go Gordon.
Go Gordon.
OK i'll rephrase it "please Gordon, just go away"
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