Lord Carter, the communications minister, has set out the interim Digital Britain report , which  takes the UK to the next stage of the information age. You can find it here. 

It includes a 22-point action plan outlines  plans for  digital transformation, inculding the upgrading and modernising of all wired, wireless and broadband infrastructure.  But does a guarantee of 2 Mbps to every home goes far enough. To get the real transformation of services into the home will require high speed to support new systems and video links – 8 Mbps minimum?

According to other Regional Champ sources, the lion’s share of the BBC’s £130m-a-year “digital switchover surplus” licence fee money is expected to be taken by Lord Carter to help achieve his goal of getting broadband in every UK home by 2012.  It is understood that the outline of a deal has been reached, although the full details have yet to be finalised, for £90m to £100m of the annual switchover surplus to be used to help the communications minister achieve his ambition of universal broadband access by 2012. The remaining £30m to £40m is said to have been earmarked for regional media. You can find out more about this devlopment athttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/29/bbc-digital-switchover-surplus-broadband

A major concern is the lack of detail about Digital Inclusion. According to close courses, the reason the publication of the full report has been delayed was there was actutally no reference to Digital Inclusion in the original at all! And some communications from Paul Murphy (Minister for Digital Inclusion) to Lord Carter was on the lines of “You’re not seriously going to publish a report called Digital Britian without any reference to Digital Inclusion, are you?” There then followed a frantic 5 days of trying to shoehorn something in….

I’m sure we’ll all be interested to see the detail when it comes along in six months time.