Digital Britain minister poised to quit

Lord Carter is expected to step down in July

Minister for communications, technology and broadcasting Lord Carter is to resign from the government after the publication of the final Digital Britain review, according to numerous press reports today.

The highly anticipated Digital Britain report could be one of the most important technology roadmaps ever published by government. The document will plot the UK's future path for all things digital, covering everything from next-generation optical-fibre networks, universal service commitment (USC) for broadband and public service broadcasting to mobile network spectrum allocation, the future of digital radio and protection of digitally created content.

An interim report, which was published in January, was criticised for being too consumer oriented. The USC of "up to 2Mbit/s" was seen by many as short changing the country in comparison with other nations such as Japan which have much more ambitious plans for super-fast bandwidth of 100Mbit/s and above.

Lord Carter was named in Gordon Brown's recent Cabinet reshuffle as one of 10 ministers serving under Lord Mandelson in the new beefed up Department for Business, but according to reports he has told the prime minister that he is willing to serve only until July.

Lord Carter was formerly chief executive of UK communications regulator Ofcom, and became minister for communications, technology & broadcasting in October 2008.