Our future transport, business and lifestyle needs will require world class digital infrastructure to underpin them. So my ambition is for the UK to be a world leader in 5G.”
Last Wednesday Chancellor Philip Hammond delivered the Autumn Statement, the second biggest economic speech after the budget in March, in front of the House of Commons.
The Treasury decided to borrow and spend to boost ultra-fast "full-fibre" broadband by 2020-21 with a £400 million investment fund. In total, the government is investing more than £1bn into digital infrastructure, supporting trials of 5G mobile communication.
Finally, the government will provide a new 100% business rates relief for a 5 year period on new full-fibre infrastructure, starting from April 2017.
The initiative is part of the bigger and newly-created National Productivity Investment Fund (NPIF), which will have £23bn available between 2017-18 and 2021-22 to fund a number of issues around infrastructure. These span across digital infrastructure, like 5G and fibre, to physical infrastructure like local transport and boosting rail capacity.
To better understand the impact of the initiative, we asked members of the Manchester tech and business community to comment on what impact they think this will have on the region.
Overall, the Treasury scheme to invest over £1bn in digital infrastructure was welcomed by everyone and deemed as crucial to the future of the UK's global leadership and the growth of the North West.
UK Fast CEO Lawrence Jones and Katie Peate from the Business Growth Hub argued that the investment is a good initiative but not enough per se: in order for it to be successful it will need a larger budget as well as business support to enable more businesses to benefit from the improved infrastructure.
All 6 interviews can be found in full on the Telcom blog.
At Telcom, we are very excited to see the government giving attention to the digital future of the country, and we think it's a first step in the right direction. We will use this opportunity to increase our contribution to the digital growth of the UK and the North West.
