H4cked Off: £40m for Internet of Things? It will barely pay for the branded stationery

Another wasted opportunity for a UK forever playing IT catch-up

George Osborne's vote-grabbing budget may have fooled certain tabloids into believing there is "hope" for savers and property buyers, but sadly for him, it will take more than a few vague promises and a cash figure pulled out of the air to persuade the IT industry.

It began with the chancellor using a cheap crack about Ed Miliband's kitchens to segue into the government's apparent realisation that we need to be "at the forefront of the development of the Internet of Things".

To prove this commitment to introduce internet connectivity to millions upon millions of devices, £40m was put aside.

This is in comparison with the ongoing £40bn broadband scheme which still has not created reliable broadband connections to many of the UK's rural areas, and which is now relying on an extra £3bn from Virgin Media (not to mention an additional £250m from the public purse last month) to try to achieve the 95 per cent coverage by 2017 target. And remember, that target is "superfast" (24Mbps-plus) whereas Osborne's new target is apparently 100Mbps for all.

To be completely accurate, the aim is for superfast broadband to be available to "nearly all UK premises" – a carefully worded caveat that means nobody has to promise anything concrete.

The IoT budget is equivalent to 0.1 per cent of the budget for the (relatively unsuccessful) broadband infrastructure revamp. And this is supposed to get us to "the forefront" of IoT. The maths really doesn't seem to add up.

It feels like yet another bandwagoning opportunity. If the government were to put its money where its mouth is, public support could lead to a real opportunity for a country that is constantly criticising itself for a lack of digital skills and insight.

Even as far back as 2013, Cisco published a white paper branding the "Internet of Everything" a $4.6trn "public sector opportunity".

Sure, as a vendor it would say that, but as someone who's tramped the halls of Mobile World Congress for the past few years and heard every man and his Bluetooth-connected dog claiming that "this is the year of the Internet of Things", 2015 may be the first time I'm liable to agree.

Companies are finally getting their act together. It's got past the sell stage now – there seems clamour enough for an Apple Watch, and a report from a well-known "connected home technology" firm today (sadly still under embargo) suggests that over half of the population is now in the market for smart meters – either using them, or widely aware of their beneficial implications.

At the BBC only last week I watched the UK technology industry attempting to rally behind a sincere but rather woolly-looking national media campaign to get children interested in digital skills, but the sad truth is that interest must be backed up by funding. The sum of £40m for "incubator space", the dreaded vagary of a "research hub" and the old chestnut "Smart City" is so five-years-ago it's painful.

To add further insult to the pocket change thrown at the issue, Osborne also said that part of the paltry £40m would be used to "empower local areas" to "make decisions and collaborations" to build "between cities, universities and businesses".

That will almost certainly be another broadband infrastructure issue, so how much of the £40m will actually be thrown into that black (cable-shaped) hole, a hole into which an amount 1,000 times larger has already disappeared?

I look forward to seeing the government's detailed IoT road map, and learning precisely how this miniscule budget will bring the UK to "the forefront" of this fast-growing and vitally important movement.