Ian
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PotGuy said:Having broadband is possibly the least essential service I can think of.
Much bigger problems to solve than helping a bunch of 14 year olds download porn a bit quicker.
The problem is the Internet is fast becoming an essential service (not as important as water/elec/gas), but along the same sort of lines as TV. When some people have 100Mbps connections in cities and others have 56k connections in towns there is a speed difference of almost 1800x. This means you can't deliver uniform services to everyone, even though we all still pay for it (iplayer, online banking, etc...). If the infrastructure is put in to place then it would be a big step forward for people living in remote parts of the country.
Yes, there are lots more important things to tackle - but this development will have more implications than you highlighted for 14 year olds

I'm quite surprised that they didn't push mobile broadband more, as that's coming down quite rapidly in price and that would kill 2 birds with one stone in rural areas (net connection and 3G).