UK government pressing on with £50m broadband plan

The UK government will continue with a £50m plan to bring high-speed, next-generation broadband to rural areas.

The Chancellor, the Gran Moff Tarkin-esque George Osborne, says £50m of new funding is being made available to local authorities to help improve their own areas.

Currently no companies have been chosen to roll out the tech in order to fulfill the government's promise of making the UK the best place in Europe for super-fast broadband by 2015.

Mr Osborne said: "This is very much a locally-driven process and we encourage bids from all local people with plans for improving broadband in their local area.

The final third

The plan is to bring to country areas fast connections currently offered in built-up areas by the likes of BT and Virgin Media through their fibre-optic tariffs, which bring download speeds of up to 50mbps.

Rural areas are currently struggling with slow speeds as the likes of Virgin and BT don't think it's worth their while building the infrastructure for limited returns on their investments.

Those homes are known as the final third.

No companies chosen

Back in October, the government announced four areas to be trialed - North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Herefordshire and the Highlands and Islands - but no firms have yet to be chosen to press on with the scheme.

Each areas is believed to have been allocated £5-10m for the scheme.

And here's us thinking Cameron was spending all of the funds scooped up from destroying local communities on creating a new Death Star. How wrong we were. Or were we?