Why is the Government giving BT £800million?

BT are apparently investing £800million in upgrading their network which sound great. But then I found out that the government (they like to take credit for our money, like they raise it all by themselves!) is giving BT £800million too to "help out".

That's a bail out isn't it? If I asked the government to match my £20,000 investment this year in to my business to make it future-proof too, they'd laugh! BT are badly run which is why they don't have enough profit to overhaul the system themselves. Aren't Virgin managing to upgrade their own systems with their own money?

They sad thing is that BT would probably just not bother upgrading if they were not given £800million for free ...

Sorry for the rant, but I'm hoping that someone out there has a plausible explanation as to why I should feel happy about all this money being given to BT rather than allowing them to fall flat on their faces and a better company take them over?

I imagine that if the group led by Fujitsu manage to pull off their fibre ambitions a lot of places BT previously said were un viable will magically become viable and they will find the money to upgrade them

And your interest in that website you link to in every post you make is?

The government is NOT giving £800 million to BT. Stop scaremongering, BT back in 2010 said they would match fund the government and if they were given £800, then could manage 90% coverage of FTTC/P.

Someone is going to get £800 million to improve the broadband network in the UK, currently a number of firms are battling for the money via BDUK.

In reply to a post by huwwatkins:

I imagine that if the group led by Fujitsu manage to pull off their fibre ambitions a lot of places BT previously said were un viable will magically become viable and they will find the money to upgrade them

indeed, expect all consurtium areas to be on BT's FTTC roadmap, they will be suddenly be viable overnight.

i thought it was £500 million?

look at the dates, you're a year behind

In reply to a post by creakycopperline:

i thought it was £500 million?

Apart from re-awakening a thread that has been dead for 11.5 months, maybe you should read the link in the opening post, where you will find the source of that figure. You could take it up with that source, as you can't get much closer to the horse's mouth.

On the other hand, it was a year ago .... I wonder if things are different, or the two figures are unrelated?

£530m BDUK pot
£20 million extra for the most rural
£100 million for ten large cities
£50m for ten smaller cities
£150m for mobile in rural areas
Another £300m or so expected between 2015 and 2017 from UK
£100m of ERDF funding

Add more that some areas can obtain from EU as part of Objective One funding and the pot gets bigger

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

£530m BDUK pot
£20 million extra for the most rural
£100 million for ten large cities
£50m for ten smaller cities
£150m for mobile in rural areas
Another £300m or so expected between 2015 and 2017 from UK
£100m of ERDF funding

Add more that some areas can obtain from EU as part of Objective One funding and the pot gets bigger

Although I'm not a BT fan, it's nice to see the money above being put to good use !

In reply to a post by creakycopperline:

i thought it was £500 million?

really bump an anti-BT thread thats nearly a year old!

Why?...