The Liberal Democrat MP for Ceredigion (Wales, UK) and Co-Chair of their Parliamentary Policy Committee for constitutional and political reform, Mark Williams, will today use his speech at the party's autumn conference in Birmingham as a platform to demand that the UK government put more money into making 100% UK coverage of broadband ISP services a reality.

At present the UK government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office already aims to bring superfast broadband (25Mbps+) access to 90% of "people in each local authority area" by 2015, while the last 10% will get at least a 2Mbps connection through their new Universal Service Commitment (USC). Critics feel that this vision is not bold enough.


The UK government's current tender for a new national framework agreement to help achieve its goals suggests that, through match-funding, the project could be worth up to a maximum of £2bn (here). It's unclear whether additional EU funding has been factored into its estimates.

Meanwhile BDUK has already allocated the vast majority of its initial £530m budget (until 2015), although this could rise to £830m by 2017 if needed. Sadly Williams has not detailed precisely what he would like to see done differently or how much extra would actually be needed.