Osborne adds twelve fibre cities

Twelve new cities were added to the ten already chosen for the government’s super-fast broadband programme, announced Chancellor George Osborne in his Autumn Statement.

£50m has been allocated to bring fast (80-100Mbps) broadband to Brighton and Hove, Cambridge, Oxford, Aberdeen, Perth, Londonderry, Salford, York, Newport, Derby, Coventry and Portsmouth.

The government plans to make the UK the European country with the greatest access to fast broadband by 2015.

The first ten cities to be announced under the scheme were London, Bradford, Leeds, Belfast, Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Cardiff.

The EU has an £8bn scheme under its Digital Agenda programme to bring 30Mbps broadband to all European households by 2020 and to bring 100Mbps to half of all European households by 2020.

Birmingham has been awarded funds under the EU scheme but BT and Virgin are trying to stop Birmingham’s build-out with a legal challenge.