Posted: 21st Jan, 2011 By: MarkJ

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.
The EC's Vice-President for Competition Policy, JoaquÃn Almunia, said:
"Smart investments into high and very high speed broadband infrastructures are crucial to create jobs, increase economic performance and to unlock the competitive potential of the EU in the long term. The Commission is committed to help EU countries to accelerate private and public investments in this sector."
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.