Poor get chance to rent cheap computers

The British government yesterday unveiled plans to lease computers to the country's poor at rock-bottom prices so that the needy need not be left out of the information revolution sweeping the world.

"Anyone left out of the new knowledge revolution will be left behind in the new knowledge economy," the chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, said at the launch of the initiative. "As we enter the next century, we must make sure that nobody is left out of the computer revolution.

"We cannot allow inequality in access to computers to lead to inequality in life for the next generation," he added.

The British government hopes that companies, community groups and charities will provide the computers.

Charges will be kept as low as £5 sterling (€7.7) a month, officials said.

Families of those claiming unemployment benefit and other kinds of state support will qualify for the terminals.

The scheme is part of a £1.7 billion information technology strategy unveiled in March by Mr Brown.

But yesterday's initiative skirted round the problem of connection charges, which remain prohibitively expensive for the poorer element in Britain to surf the Internet.

Pressure groups have been urging the British government and telephone companies to introduce unmetered access to the Internet. They have argued that the local phone charges levied on surfers are a huge impediment to the kind of mass online activity that could help encourage the Internet to take off.

"There is no point in giving people a cheap bit of kit if they find themselves with an enormous phone bill at the end of the month," noted opposition Conservative technology spokesman, Mr Alan Duncan.

"The best thing the government could do to help low-paid families to gain access to the Internet would be to encourage telecommunications companies to bring down the cost of phone calls," Mr Duncan said.

One survey showed recently that a typical residential Internet customer spends some £30 a month on calls for 30 hours of Internet access.

Mr Brown for his part said that the British government's efforts to encourage competition in the telecoms sector would help drive down the cost of Internet access.