The European Commission (EC) has approved £1.528bn (€1.8 billion) in state aid (public funds) to help achieve its Digital Agenda targets for broadband development. The agenda promises, among other things, to bring "basic" and "competitively-priced" broadband internet access to all Europeans by 2013.

In addition the EU's plan goes even further and aims to ensure that, by 2020, all Europeans have access to much higher internet speeds of above 30Mbps and 50% or more of EU households subscribe to internet access above 100Mbps.

The cash, which was all approved for various projects around the EU last year (2010), could potentially generate up to £2.97bn (€3.5 billion) of investment in the sector. The approved aid in 2010 is more than four times the amount allowed in 2009.


It's worth pointing out that a large chunk of EU funding, mostly in previous years, has also gone to ISP projects in the United Kingdom (UK), with the following being listed as recently approved for 2010 (full list .PDF).

EC Decisions on UK State Aid for Broadband (2010)
* N 461/2009 (12/05/2010) Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Next Generation Broadband
- http://ec.europa.eu/community_law/state_aids/comp-2009/n461-09.pdf

* N 559/2009 (28/06/2010) North Yorkshire – Next Generation Broadband
- http://ec.europa.eu/eu_law/state_aids/comp-2009/n559-09.pdf

* N 497/2010 (13/12/2010) SHEFA [Shetland Islands] – 2 Interconnect
- Not yet published

The EC believes that its targets can only be achieved if EU and public funds complement Private Sector Investments to extend current generation broadband and superfast broadband coverage to areas where market operators are unlikely to invest (i.e. 'Final Third' rural towns and villages) on commercial terms in the near future.

Besides national funding, for the 2007 to 2013 financing period of the EU Structural Funds, a total of €2.3 billion was allocated to broadband infrastructure investments and €12.9 billion to information society services; and a further €360 million through the Fund for Rural Development was used for broadband funding. The EIB invested in 2009 €2.3 billion (since 2000 a total of €12 billion) in broadband infrastructures.