UK Concedes that Scotland Did Not Get a Fair Share of Broadband Funds

The Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Investment, Alex Neil (SNP), claims that the UK’s central government (Westminster) “have now conceded that we did not get our fair share” of funding to assist with the rollout of faster broadband internet access services in rural areas.

So far Scotland has been allocated £68.8m from the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office, which will help to ensure that 90% of UK “people in each local authority area” can access a superfast broadband (25Mbps+) ISP service by 2015 (the remaining 10% will only get a minimum speed of 2Mbps). By contrast Wales received £56.9 Million and as a result Neil claims that Scotland was “short-changed“.

Scotland’s own Digital Future plan, which was released in January 2012 (here), envisages “world-class digital access” being made available to all of Scotland by 2020; with an interim milestone of delivering superfast broadband (“40-80Mbps“) to 85-90% of premises by 2015.

Alex Neil told last weeks SNP Conference in Glasgow (DGStandard):

“They [the UK central government] have now conceded that we did not get our fair share, and I have a meeting fairly soon in London with Mr Hunt [DCMS Secretary of State] to ensure that we get it.”

Neil believes that Scotland should receive a “much higher share“, although it remains to be seen how Westminster will respond.