Surfing UK: closing the digital divide between rich and poor

Many people will remember Claire Shearman who worked with us on a number of EU ICT projects in the 1990s. Claire now lives in Melbourne, Australia, and was recently listening to a radio programme about the Digital Divide in Europe, originated by a German radio station and broadcast by Australian radio. One of the items featured was about Eastserve in East Manchester and so she sent us the link so that you can access it too. A small but increasingly digitally inclusive world (we hope). – Dave Carter

The following text and MP3 taken from the original article on the Deutsche Welle website.

The European Union wants all its citizens to have broadband internet by 2013. But while some member states, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, have all but reached that goal, some countries are still lagging behind.

Perhaps surprisingly the UK is among them, and there is fear of a widening digital divide between those who can afford home computing and those who cannot. Now the British government has decided to take drastic action to get people online.

Lars Bevanger has this report from Manchester. Download the report in MP3 format.

Deutsche Welle Original Article: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5238583,00.html