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Super-fast broadband plans for Europe

In the aftermath of French President Francois Holland’s announcement that he will be pledging almost 20 billion Euros into blanketing high speed broadband across the nation, we begin to question his decision when the rest of the European Union are planning broadband budget cuts. Holland’s pledge was that the entire country would have access to fast internet speeds within the next ten years, and the money targeted to this project would kick start the creation of this as quickly as possible. Holland’s decision was made due to the need for rural areas to catch up with the rest of the country and he is directly quoted as stating “The very high speed enhances the competitiveness and attractiveness of the region” - reported by the French publication ITespresso.

The plan, aptly named ‘The French Digital Ambition’ is certainly a tall ask considering the tough economic climate we are all facing at the moment. The funding for the project will be split between both private and public funding, which could in turn make both tax payers and small businesses financial lives slightly harder than they already are! However the ambitious plan, if completed on time and within budget, could potentially help the economy grow through the growth and development of businesses that thrive in the online world.

Currently, Frances rural broadband speeds are around 8-16 Megabytes per second, certainly a lot slower than the speeds within towns and cities which can go all the way up to 100 Megabytes. This limitation has been decided upon by French telecom companies such as Vivendi, who simply couldn’t cover the costs of adding in super fast broadband to sparsely populated areas as it simply wasn’t economically viable. Which is the exact debate we witnessed last week when UK Prime Minister David Cameron proposed budget cuts for rural broadband in the UK and Europe of up to 30 billion Euros?

How will Holland’s decision help the country as a whole? The proposed funding plan for this venture will be a three pronged approach. One third will be covered by private businesses in densely populated cities, the next third will come from operators and those living in medium sized towns and then the final third will come from those in the rural areas and local government. That will leave the taxpayers paying increased tax whilst living in this age of austerity, which I am sure doesn’t outweigh the cost of having slower broadband.

This stance by the French government does proactively point out the increasing need by states to offer rural areas full speed coverage in order to maintain a countries growth. Although this is not the stance taken by all of the EU states, the US recently laid out their plans for similar internet growth, with a proposal for 1 Gigabyte broadband to all by 2015. In the EU, the larger internet providers are all investing billions in private network boosts look set to come into play within the next 5 years.

This will eventually lead to an increase in jobs, small businesses operating in rural areas and will have a direct impact on Frances deficit, so the balancing act does look set to even out in the future. When the EU vote in March in regards to the budget cuts surrounding rural broadband, we will finally have an answer as to whether we will all benefit from a similar plan to that offered by Holland.

If like many of us, you simply can’t wait until the outcome of the UK broadband debate then why not have a look at Wireless Broadband offered by Virgin Media or similar.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anita I. .