14 DAY TRIAL // A couple of years ago, the UK announced ambitious plans to have the fastest broadband in Europe by 2015. Later, it revised the goal to the "best" broadband in Europe, which it defined as coverage.
The plan was more than ambitious – it was unattainable, as the UK is simply too big and too spread out to contend in any broadband race, particularly since it's very far behind at the moment.
In fact, the UK National Audit Office found that the plan to improve broadband access in rural areas is not progressing as needed and is now two years behind schedule.
Of the 44 rural areas part of the project, only 9 were on track of reaching their 2015 goals. Four of them might not even be able to reach a 2017 deadline.
The big goal is to have 90 percent broadband coverage by 2015. According the report, that deadline will be hard to reach.
But it gets worse as, according to the report, the 26 contracts to bring broadband to rural areas, sponsored by the government, were all awarded to BT mostly because it was the only bidder.
There are no signs that it will get any rivals for the rest of the contracts, and that's because the government rules and EU regulations for bidders ensured that only BT would qualify.
This, of course, ensured that BT could set the price. In fact, some documents that got leaked to the NAO indicated that BT had an 80 percent markup on the rural broadband projects, a claimed the latter denied.
Still, the NAO report says that the government, meaning UK taxpayers, will now pay for a bigger share of the project's cost. Initially, the government expected BT to pay 36 percent of the expenses, but that share has now dropped to 23 percent, which adds up to quite a sum.