Minister announces delay to broadband quango launch

Little to differentiate parties' plans without Network Design and Procurement Group

During a speech at the NextGen09 conference this week, Minister for Digital Britain Stephen Timms announced that the Network Design and Procurement Group, tasked with distributing funds collected from the government’s 50p tax on landlines, will now be formed in the new year rather than this autumn as was originally announced in the Digital Britain report.

The 50p levy on fixed line calls laid out in the Digital Britain report would be used to finance the rollout of broadband to the third of the population currently without connection.

Without the new Network Design and Procurement Group in place, it is difficult to distinguish between the policies of the two main parties because it is not yet clear whether the quango will just hand the money to BT or channel the funds into local projects.

Channelling funds into local projects may have a similar effect to that of the Conservative policy outlined by shadow minister for the arts and creative industries Ed Vaisey, who was speaking at the same event.

He said the Conservatives would look to achieve the same goals for digital inclusion by reforming local authority powers.

Central to this are plans to give councils more freedom to spend their income on local priorities and give them access to the bond markets so they can raise finance to invest locally. This way, if councils feel that broadband is affecting their local economy, it could issue bonds and invest funds in a local fibre-optic broadband infrastructure.