HDTV/3D TV News
Politics is once again focusing on the potentially vote winning (or indeed losing) issue of next generation broadband, and how best to ensure it’s adopted country-wide.
Gordon Brown’s latest sound-bites on the issue came in a speech he made today, where he again promised super-fast broadband for the whole country, and not just the big cities where it’s commercially viable.
He didn’t give a timescale or any new information on when the entire country could expect to be hooked up to next-gen, however, in a typically up-in-the-air pre-election promise.
Labour plans to pay for the development of broadband in the UK with a landline tax, which the Tories are opposed to. The Conservatives themselves expect to rely on private companies, dipping into the TV license fund to help if necessary.
In his speech, Brown did also talk about a single website of the future that will bring all government services under one umbrella.
Using MyGov, UK citizens will be able to pay their council tax, apply for benefits, make an appointment at the doctors and so forth, all at the same portal.
Forgive us if we don’t get too excited about the prospect of being able to pay our hugely inflated council tax in a handy-dandy manner.
To make the mygov plans work it needs to link to channels that people use regularly, such as Facebook and Twitter in order to drive traffic to the site. Government also needs to make sure it has the right networks in place on its side to support the traffic that mygov will generate – if performance is slow or the site falls over people will just return to other channels. Only if these factors are addressed will mygov really take off and meet its aims.