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A digital budget?

A digital budget?

With the announcement of the launch of the Institute of Web Science (headed up by king of the internet himself - Tim Berners-Lee) and confirmation of the 50p 'Broadband Tax', many are hailing Alistair Darling's latest effort as a truly digitally minded budget.

Not that this is without its controversies - the desire to roll out 'superfast' broadband across 90% of the UK by 2017 may be a noble one, but not everyone wants to pay the 50p per month it's going to cost them to do it.

I guess the real question is whether broadband's a luxury or a utility? We think nothing of paying taxes to maintain our gas pipes - is there a great deal of difference between these and fibre optic cables? I'm not so sure.

The success of the Institute of Web Science remains to be seen, but with a promise to invest £30 million in it, you'd hope it would be worthwhile! It's going to be a collaborative project, based out of Oxford & Southampton Universities, designed to 'bridge the gap between businesses and commercialise web technologies' and put the UK at the forefront of the digital revolution.

It's a bold mission statement, but having Berners-Lee at the helm can only help!

 

Created on Thursday March 25 2010 11:57 AM


Tags: website budget-2008 investment broadband budget digital webscience berners-lee


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