The good news for people worried about potential budget cuts destroying the UK’s ability to gain access to next generation broadband is that the technology will still be a big priority.

In the Queen’s Speech, plans for the creation of a new high speed network that had been talked about – but never solidified – under the last government were laid out. While many other schemes such as ID cards will be scrapped as unnecessary and expensive, it seems that the government believes that gaining a faster and more reliable broadband network is not something that can be compromised.

The speech laid out the Lib-Con coalitions plans to “look at ways of ensuring a strong, competitive, market-led approach to next generation broadband rollout across the country” which would likely use technology such as Fibre To the Home (FTTH) and Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) to provide the connections, with average speeds in the 40 to 60 Mbps range. Such technology would greatly speed up the UK and provide, in some cases, access to the internet without phone line.

The department of Culture, Media and Sport will be in charge of the rollout, and the government believes that most of the actual cost will come from the civil engineering factor – most notably the cost and disruption caused by digging up the roads. The government also plans to allow companies to use infrastructure already in place which could reduce the cost enough to make developing for rural areas commercially viable.

There were some notable emissions in the broadband plan however. No mention was made of previous Tory proposals to use money from the BBC licence fee to pay for the rollout, and Labours commitment to provide a standard of 2 Mbps broadband across the country by 2012 was also not mentioned, sparking fears the commitment may have been scrapped. However, mobile broadband using both contract and pay as you go dongles may be able to rememdy that.

The commitment from the government seems strong and genuine however, and while better speeds and availability won’t happen overnight, the fact that broadband is seeing continued investment while many other areas are facing huge cuts is a good sign.

The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) has announced this week its delight that the Digital Economy Bill is here to stay under the new Conservative government.

The act was discussed heavily during the election, with Labour and the Conservatives both keen to push it through while the Liberal Democrats wanted to look at it In greater length. However, none of the previous Lib Dem opposition could be seen when it was announced by the New Minister for Culture, Jeremy Hunt, that the bill would be staying.

FAST claims that software piracy rates are at around 27% in the UK, suggesting that such piracy costs the economy over £1,000 million every single year, although it’s famously difficult to really predict just how much piracy “costs” anyone.

Chief Executive of FAST, John Lovelock said:

“This is great news for the software industry, long struggling with internet piracy, together with other intellectual property rights holders. Our hope is that the graduated response provisions of this Act will be proportionate and drive traffic towards legitimate downloads. At this time of economic pressure this is great news for the country too, since more legitimate sales will mean more tax revenue and more workers in employment – everyone wins.”

Not everyone is convinced that ‘everyone wins’ of course – many consumer groups and internet service providers are strongly against the new bill which will impose technical limits upon net users who are suspected of file sharing, such as disconnections and speed restrictions and could even make broadband more expensive for everyone as ISPs are made to shoulder the costs.

Interestingly while the government are keen to push forward with a bill designed to make money for the entertainment and software industry, there’s been no mention of the USC – a promise by the previous government to provide a 2 Mbps net connection across the entire country by 2012.

It might seem like everyone has broadband connection these days, but the latest figures from Point Topic suggest that broadband is still a massive growth area – especially on a fixed line connection. Currently around 18 million homes connect to the internet via their homes using a fixed line connection – usually cable or ADSL. By 2014, this number is set to rise to a massive 25 million – a million more than was previously predicted.

Why the jump? Point Topic suggests that people will be highly interested in the brand new rollout of superfast broadband being introduced by out by BT, which uses much faster FTTC and FTTH technology to provide speeds at least twice as fast as some of the best ADSL connections now available. The company believe that the UK will see a big leap in the amount of connection due to the availability of faster technology, much like what happened when ADSL became widely available – and much cheaper – ten years ago.

Chief Analyst at Point Topic, Tim Johnson stated:

“We believe that FTTx will echo the development of DSL in the UK. People with dial-up internet access converted to broadband in their millions in the boom years. We forecast that superfast broadband will do the same around the middle of this coming decade.

The difference from the noughties is that we think there will be a quicker run-up this time. While it took DSL three years to get from almost nothing to half a million, we expect that FTTx will cover similar ground in only two years.”

In reality though, there’s plenty of barriers stopping this technology being adopted with any great speed. Pricing, confusion over how the technology works and the availability of these services will hinder the technology. Despite this, Point Topic believe that by 2016 12 million lines will be connected using the new technology, many of whom will have converted from DSL services.

A similar take up for mobile broadband has been predicted globally, using dongles for laptops and other devices, although this is likely to have the same impact in the UK as it will elsewhere in the world where broadband without phone line technology is more important, due to fixed lines are being available or reliable.