{"id":30084,"date":"2022-02-10T12:49:14","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T12:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=30084"},"modified":"2022-02-10T12:49:14","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T12:49:14","slug":"new-isp-association-commitments-to-help-fix-uk-digital-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/02\/new-isp-association-commitments-to-help-fix-uk-digital-divide.html","title":{"rendered":"New ISP Association Commitments to Help Fix UK Digital Divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA<\/a>), which is a trade body for broadband providers, has today partnered up with the Good Things Foundation, a digital inclusion charity, as part of a fresh attempt at helping to fix the digital divide so that more people are willing and able to get online.<\/p>\n

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), some 6.3% of adults in the UK had never used the internet in 2020 (down from 7.5% in 2019) and that equates to about 3.36 million people over the age of 16. Naturally, there can be many reasons for this, such as issues of affordability, age, disability, network coverage, lack of skills and not to mention that not everybody wants to use the internet (they shouldn’t be forced).<\/p>\n

The ISP industry is no stranger to this challenge. Some providers already offer a Social Tariff<\/strong> to financially vulnerable customers or provide low-cost entry-level broadband packages – and \u2018unlimited<\/em>\u2019 data is generally provided as standard. In addition to this, many ISPA<\/a> members are helping to address the digital divide by donating free data or devices to charities or work in local communities through schools, voluntary organisations.<\/p>\n

However, there is always more that could be done, which is why the ISPA has partnered up with the Good Things Foundation in order to build on and complement existing industry efforts by raising the current level of support across the breadth of the sector. As part of that, the organisation has today made a series of commitments for 2022.<\/p>\n

The ISPA Commits to..<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n