Budget 2015: The IoT, Broadband And Public Wi-Fi

UK Chancellor George Osborne has revealed the 2015 budget plan, his final one before the General Election where Conservative leader David Cameron will fight to retain his spot against the four other major parties.

In the 2015 budget, Osborne spoke a lot about the benefits of the UK economy, and how he expects it to surpass even Germany by 2030. The doom and gloom of 2015 is almost over, and according to Osborne it is time to invest in the future.

The future is an odd variety of things for the government, including dropping the corporation tax for small businesses, lowering tax for video games, movies and TV and investing in new areas like the Internet of Things, self-driving cars and public WiFi.

Investment in the Internet of Things sounds great, considering the potential for everything in the house to be connected. It could also be a major driver for innovation and efficiency in the business sector, as data analysts gain more information from connected devices located worldwide.

Osborne claimed this was the next stage in the information revolution, before throwing a kicker at Labour PM candidate Ed Miliband: “So should – to use a ridiculous example – someone have two kitchens, they will be able to control both fridges from the same mobile phone.”

Broadband is another area where Osborne would like to see progress and is pushing for 100Mbps internet in all areas of the UK in the 2015 budget. Considering the current push for rural broadband over 5Mbps, it might be a bit rich to start pushing for super-fast broadband in places that already have 25 or 50Mbps.

Osborne is open to the idea of low-orbit satellite technologies for places in the UK that cannot get broadband. Google, Facebook, SpaceX and other companies are all investing in this new technology, to bring internet to the most remote places on the planet.

The UK government also made from in the budget for heavy investment in public WiFi in places like libraries, town halls and offer more broadband vouchers for UK citizens.

Mobile business will be opened up with a new £600 million spectrum band auction for 4G networks, after a strong 6 million start on 4G LTE customers, fronted mostly by EE’s network.