UK Chancellor George Osborne named 10 cities in the 2012 budget to benefit from a £100 million investment to deliver “ultrafast broadband coverage” to 1.7 million households and 200,000 businesses by 2015. There is also a provision included for £50 million to fund 10 smaller “super-connected” cities. The new budget also calls for extending mobile coverage to 60,000 more homes. The government will be using a £150 million investment that was announced in last Autumn. The video game, high-end television, and animation sectors will see a tax cuts. There is not much details released yet as well as no specific scheduled is out. The provisions are focused on making the UK “Europe’s technological center.”
BBC notes that Julian David, newly appointed director general of Intellect, the trade body for the UK’s technology industry, felt the government could have gone further. “What we need now is action to turn this vision into reality,” he said. “We need to go much further than today’s announcement on the creative industries and broadband and take some real action to optimise the full potential of the entire UK tech sector. Adding, “We have to be world leaders not only in the creation of new technology but also its use and exploitation.” According to The Guardian, the UK employs approximately 9,000 people working across 300 different studios.
