Birmingham wants affordable broadband for all
Kablenet.com
Published: 24 Jan 2008 13:46 GMT
A Birmingham City Council cabinet member has called on broadband providers to help families who struggle to afford the service.
Councillor Les Lawrence, cabinet member for children, young people and families, justified the appeal on the grounds of bridging the "digital divide".
He said that government figures showing there are 800,000 pupils without broadband access in their homes shows there is a divide, with some pupils unable to use the internet as a study and research tool.
Lawrence said that broadband connections to family homes should be at a cost designed to help young people.
The council linked the appeal to the government's formation of a home-access taskforce to get more school pupils online. It said it is the only local authority to have had officers working to prepare for the launch of the taskforce.
Lawrence said: "21st century children and young people wishing to achieve economic wellbeing when they leave full-time education need to have the skills required by 21st century employers, including literacy, numeracy, communications and IT.
"It is time that the suppliers of broadband internet connections look at ways that they can reduce the cost for families that have children and young people at home requiring internet access for academic studies. This will need an integrated up approach between the internet suppliers, the government, local authorities and IT charities to be able to drive down prices."
In the course of this month Birmingham is providing 2,000 school pupils with laptop computers, and plans to hand out another 6,000 by the end of the summer term, as part of its universal home access programme. This is being done with the support of a £5.7m grant from central government, with the funding targeted at the 10 percent most-deprived secondary school pupils.
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