EU plan to spend billions on boosting broadband speeds
 

The European Commission is set to propose investing almost ?9.2bn (£8bn) in a massive rollout of super-fast broadband infrastructure and services across the European Union.

The plan is partly aimed at stimulating further investment in rural broadband.

It is hoped the initiative will also help to create a single market for digital public services.

The Commission has already set targets for improving the speed of home internet connections across the region.

It aims to get all European households on at least 30 megabits per second (Mbps) by 2020, with half the population enjoying more than 100Mbps, so as to make the continent more competitive and productive.

Economic need

The BBC understands that the EU's executive body will propose the funding, which would be invested between 2014 and 2020, on Wednesday.

The plan would have to be approved by the European Parliament and the EU's Council of Ministers if it were to become reality.

"Europe needs these fast broadband networks to allow its economy to become more competitive in the future, and so create more jobs and prosperity," EU sources said.

"This money would stimulate much greater investment of private and other public money. Each euro [invested by the Commission] would give rise to a further six to 15 euros more."

At least ?7bn of the investment would go to building high-speed broadband networks, with the funding mostly in the form of debt instruments and equity.

The hope is that giving infrastructure projects credibility in this way would encourage the private sector, as well as local and national governments, to invest at least a further ?50bn in the rollout.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15320628

this project has fail written all over it

Isn't Europe broke?

Yeah apart from when it comes to giving the peoples money to corporations who will in return charge us for the pleasure of using the service we paid for.

They failed in trying to get the UK Government to charge everyone a certain amount per month to build the infrastructure so BT could then charge us to use it so now they are just going to take the money from the EU.

Not quite as broke as the US.. China wins!.. 你是如何做

Yea, sure.

.

As do a lot of other public infrastructure projects all over the world. It's a bottomless money pit:2 cents:

The UK mainly use lines that were laid in the late 90s when a few companies laid them, then went bankrupt, they were sold the lines cheap to the companies that stand today. In the meantime, new lines are being laid to cope with higher speeds and the amount of people using them. Therefore the price for broadband shall increase.

While the European commission wants to propose the "new high speed infrastucture", it needs to be paid for & the world is broke zorgman... That's for funding on policing, schooling, food & hospitals, come on, we all need to watch porn...(a sort of joke)

Most probably, the amount of cost to upgrade the lines, has been worked out based on the amount the public have spent on broadband over the passed few years. Most people have broadband & most people try to get the fastest speeds they can. Virgin Media have increased there lines in the local areas to handle 100mpb as a standard & can push 200 or more... Wonder what their charge is going to be or have they been over pricing & making billions already?

I wish we were, I was hoping that the Euro would seriously deprecieate, but it never happened....

i pay 15eur for 1.5mbps but in 2 months i will get 6mbps for same price form another provider, fucking RIP OFF

europe sucks!