Martha Lane Fox praises digital information access in Barnsley

The government's digital inclusion champion, Martha Lane Fox, has praised authorities in Barnsley for seizing the initiative with a new digital inclusion scheme.

Totally Online Barnsley is being funded using £3 million from the UK government and Europe to get local people onto the internet as part of a wider project called Making IT Personal, which encompasses the whole of South Yorkshire, reports 24dash.com.

The project is designed to introduce people to the internet who may not previously have had access or have chosen to ignore it for whatever reason through the establishment of local data centres.

Ms Lane Fox told the website: "Barnsley really is embracing the digital inclusion agenda with the launch of these initiatives."

Barnsley Metropolitan borough council has been instrumental in encouraging people to access the network being developed by Digital Region in partnership with Thales UK.

The network will cover nearly the whole of South Yorkshire and deliver broadband speeds of around 25 megabits per second (Mbps) to more than half a million homes.

Every UK home should have a connection of at least 2Mbps by 2012, which could enable VoIP hardware to run more effectively.