If you want to encourage people to use the internet, don’t appeal to their hearts and minds, appeal to their wallets. That seems to be the strategy of the UK’s Digital Inclusion Task Force, which says digitally excluded households are missing out on average savings of £560 per year from shopping and paying bills online.
The information comes from a report written by PricewaterhouseCoopers at the request of Martha Lane Fox, best known as the founder of travel website lastminute.com, and now the UK’s Champion for Digital Inclusion.
The European Commission has given the green light to the largest ever government-backed fibre-to-the-home project in Europe.
Le Figaro reports that the French President has given the country’s four main telecoms operators just two weeks to come up with a joint proposal for 
Europe doles out funds for rural broadband
Amidst all the brouhaha over broadband stimulus funding in the US, it’s easy to forget that Europe has its very own economic stimulus package, called the European Economic Recovery Plan (EERP), with an allocation of €1.0 billion to be spent on broadband in rural areas between 2009 and 2013. And last week the first wave of approvals for EERP funding were handed out.
Five countries have amended their rural development plans to take advantage of the extra funding for broadband. They are Austria (€15.0 million), Cyprus (€0.9 million), Finland (€24.6 million), Italy (Toscana and Sardegna regions, together €11.3 million), and the UK (Northern Ireland region, €1.4 million). Grand total: €53.2 million.
Read More »