Hung parliament could threaten digital Britain

Britain’s policy on rolling out broadband could be in trouble if the upcoming election leaves us with a widely predicted hung parliament.

This is the belief of Anthony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, an industry and government forum dedicated to this subject area.

During a Westminster forum, Walker pointed out the two different approaches towards broadband held by the Labour and Conservative parties.

“We now have two quite different roadmaps for broadband,” he said. “There is the Labour industrial activism approach, which I call the nuts and bolts... and the heart of that is that we know there is a problem coming up [with not enough people being served by broadband] and should take action now.”

“The Conservative approach is very different... it looks at the market mechanism, looking for new market entry [and to] grow the value of the market in the hope that the market exceeds the expectations that we expect today and actually delivers more.”

“That policy says lets worry about rural areas later and make this market dynamic as we can.”

The result of the next election would define which path to follow but Walker warned the whole issue could be brought to a halt if we end up with hung parliament.

“However, if there is real political uncertainty [hung parliament] then questions will be raised... and could put it back years.”

However, Walker ended on a positive note, listing elements of broadband policy that we can deal with now such as local projects, digital inclusion and discussing the universal service commitment of 2Mbps.

“I think there are reasons to be gloomy that we are still here and still debating the same issues [but] there are political [elements] we need to expect,” he concluded.

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