PM’s New Deal to include cash for next-gen broadband?

Yesterday El Gordo announced a Teddy Roosevelt New Deal-style programme of job creation in the public sector to help revitalise the British economy. Speaking to the Observer, the PM hinted, amid New Year’s resolutions to take up jogging and halting deployment of more troops in Afghanistan, of government investment in next-gen superfast broadband.

Directly referencing FDR’s historic reform programme, Brown likened a next generation comms infrastructure to; “the roads and the bridges and the railways that were built in previous times…

Those were anti-recession measures taken to help people through difficult times – you could [by comparison] talk about the digital infrastructure and that form of communications revolution at a period when we want to stimulate the economy. It’s a very important thing.”

The Government has yet to announce any concrete details on how much would be spent and how funds would be allocated, or if ISPs would receive funds or tax breaks for investment in fibre.

BT have pledged £10 billion for a new network which would provide high speed connections to some 10 million homes by 2012. It has been estimated that the cost for a full nationwide fibre optic network would cost around £29 billion.

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