Government announces £362m in broadband funding

As expected the government has announced the allocation of a further £362m of their £530m pot of monies to support universal coverage of at least 2Mb broadband to all homes by 2015 and the availability of Next Generation speeds of at least 25Mb to 90% of the UK over the same time period.

The allocation was announced by culture secretary Jeremy Hunt this morning, and includes £294m of funding for English counties and £68.8m for those in Scotland to support availability in areas where it would not otherwise be commercially viable to further rollout broadband technologies.

County councils and private enterprise partnerships will decide which company(ies) to partner with and will be responsible for the raising of further funding in order to ensure the government's targets are met - other than in Scotland, where the local government will decide how the funds are best spent to achieve the goals.

Announcing the allocations (which can be found county-by-county here) Hunt said:

"Fast broadband is absolutely vital to our economic growth, to delivering public services effectively, and to conducting our everyday lives.

But some areas of the UK are missing out, with many rural and hard-to-reach communities suffering painfully slow internet connections or no coverage at all.

We are not prepared to let some parts of our country get left behind in the digital age."

I urge all those suffering the frustration of slow internet connections to make it clear to your local elected representatives that you expect them to do what is needed to access this investment and to deliver broadband to your community."

Wales and Northern Ireland have already had their share of the central pot allocated - £56.9m to Wales and £4.4m to Northern Ireland.

A further £300m is to be allocated post 2015, subject to government approval.