Baroness Shriti Vaderahas been named
as the new UK broadband minister afterStephen Timmsmoved on to the
Department for Work and Pensions following a cabinet
reshuffle.
Baroness Vadera has been confirmed as Mr Timms' replacement in
the post of communications minister and the Department for
Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform will make a formal
announcement later today.
Stephen Timms had been in talks with ISPs in November about how
to improve broadband access in the UK.
Gareth Thomas, minister for trade and development, said that the
biggest challenge for the government remained encouraging
investment from the private sector to build fast broadband
networks.
"There is no obvious business case for private sector to invest
in networks," he said.
Thomas said renewing the telecoms infrastructure in the UK was a
priority and that he had seen positive signs from companies that
they were willing to talk about ways they could make investments,
rather than have the government intervene with potentially
"disruptive" effects to the broadband market.
Read John-Paul Kamath'slive blog on the cabinet reshuffle.