Brown Plots New Broadband Initiative

By Jayne Davison
Published on 23 Sep 2008
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Brown Plots New Broadband Initiative

Over a million children from low-income households are to gain access to the internet, according to the prime minister's new plan.

Gordon Brown will promise to make broadband accessible to low-income children.

A new £300 million broadband scheme, to be unveiled at this week's Labour party conference, will be specifically targeted at poor families. The three-year programme is to work through a voucher system, with tokens worth up to £700 being made available for buying computer equipment.

Technical assistance and connections equipment are also to be made tradable by the vouchers, which start at £100.

"To ensure we are prepared for the times to come, the government will fund one million more households to get online, enabling parents to link with teachers and their children's schools to help young people with homework and coursework," Mr Brown will tell conference.

The prime minister has already attracted the ire of the broadband industry when, as chancellor of the exchequer, he was instrumental in discontinuing the Home Computing Initiative in 2006. The scheme allowed firms to loan computers to workers tax-free in order to boost home connection numbers.

Official figures currently show that broadband reaches just six in ten households. Just under one and a half million British children are thought not to currently have access to a home broadband connection.

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