Prague, July 16 (CTK) – The Czech public budgets should support the development of high-speed Internet networks enabling connections of up to 100 megabits per second, Deputy Prime Minister Pavel Belobradek said after a meeting of the government council for competitiveness and economic growth yesterday.
“If we want to be an industrial power, we need digitisation to proceed as far as possible,” said Belobradek who heads the council.
He mentioned 14 billion crowns that may be distributed within new programmes of the Industry and Trade Ministry.
The EU wants all its citizens to have Internet connections of the minimum speed of 30 megabits per second by 2020. Germany wants to have the minimum speed of 50 megabits for all its population.
“We should be even more ambitious and support networks enabling still higher-speed connections of 60 to 100 megabits per second from public finances,” Belobradek said.
He said modern technologies are popular among the young people, yet the Czech digital industry does not have enough experts. People might be retrained and citizens might be offered these jobs, he added.
Though the Czech Republic was the most industrial country of the European Union, with industry producing about one third of the GDP and employing about 35 percent of the working people, it was the industry’s structure that is the most important for competitiveness, Belobradek said.
“We need the industry to be on the top level rather than to only produce what was devised elsewhere,” he said.
Belobradek said an increased budget for applied research and support for firms focusing on digital industry were ways to improve the situation in the country.
He said industrial associations and trade unions wanted the post of a national coordinator for digital economy to be set up.
($1=24.590 crowns)
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