The UK governments Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, has committed to spending £200m to ensure that towns, cities and remote areas of Scotland will all have access to next generation networks by 2017. Timms promised a specific focus on bringing the services to areas that would not be reached by private sector investment alone.


Timms is expected to outline more details tonight when he attends a meeting that is taking place at Consumer Focus Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow. We suspect that most of the £200m will come from the governments controversial 50p tax on all "telephone bills" to help fund the roll-out of next generation broadband to over 90% of the UK by 2017.

That tax alone, which many are opposed to and could be scrapped by a future conservative government, will only provide between £150-£175m per year to support private investment in delivering high speed broadband. It will also be split up between hard-to-reach areas of Scotland and the UK. Of course we’re only a few months away from the next general election so expect lots of “we can solve all your problems” style promises that will never be kept.