Across the Pond

By Brad

As the U.S. seeks to boost its broadband development, our allies in the United Kingdom are hatching plans of their own.

Britain plans to provide universal broadband access along the lines of the post and telephone services in a bid to make the country more competitive and help drag it out of recession.

A report by Communications minister Lord Carter said Britain would work to provide Internet access to the whole country at around 2 Megabits per second (Mb) through a mixture of fixed and wireless connections by 2012.

At the moment, around 99% of the UK has access to broadband, with an estimated 60% of the country actually using it. Many of them, however, don’t have access to service at the required 2 Mb speed.