The governments communications minister, Ed Vaizey, has warned that the cost of delivering a minimum broadband ISP download speed of 2Mb (Megabits per second) to everybody in the country by 2015 - Universal Service Commitment (USC) - will be "at least double" the previous administrations best estimate.

It's known that the previous Labour government had set aside approximately £200m for the USC, while the current government has a so far accumulated a pile of around £300m (available from 2012) to deal with both the USC and Next Generation Access (NGA) "super-fast" broadband projects.


Vaizey gave the reply in response to a question put by Stephen Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham. A more interesting question would be where all that money is likely to end up? We fear that much of it will be eaten by the writing of new reports, reviews and general administration instead of practical projects.