Lord Carter Asks BBC To Part Fund Broadband Plans

In order to reach the Government’s target of providing broadband access in every UK home by 2012, Lord Carter is now asking the BBC to help fund part of the UK’s broadband plans.
When talking about how the issue of funding is potentially hindering the UK’s new superfast fibre optic broadband plans, Lord Carter stated: “Would the nation’s state funded content provider have a role in this? It would seem to me it would.”

The BBC would not be the only broadcaster to be asked to fund broadband access. Sky, Virgin Media and Tiscali have all got interests in content production and high speed internet access and may well be asked aswell.

With high numbers of people looking at media content online (up to 20% of media consumption will soon be web based), it will no doubt be in the BBC’s best interests to enable more people to view the content it posts online.

The news that the BBC could contribute to the funding of broadband networks comes as welcome news to many industry experts.

Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, the president of the Country Land Association, said “We won’t have universal broadband in rural areas without significant public investment. We have already said that a proportion of the BBC license fee should be used to contribute to the cost of this.”

However, whilst BBC funding will help, it is not going to solve the funding issue. More funding is needed by more companies to ensure that the broadband goal of reaching every home in the UK is possible by 2012.