Martha Lane Fox launches fresh attempt to get Britain online
Digital champion teams up with TalkTalk in bid to convert offline Brits
The UK's digital champion, Martha Lane Fox, has announced a radical new scheme to encourage the remaining eight million of us who have never used the internet to get online.
Working in partnership with broadband provider TalkTalk, the businesswoman, who co-founded travel website lastminute.com during the "dot-com boom" in 1998, has now launched Go ON UK.
The new organisation - which also has on board Age UK, the BBC, Big Lottery Fund, E.ON, Lloyds Banking Group and the Post Office - has pledged to bring the benefits of the internet to every individual, company and community in Britain.
Martha Lane Fox said: "Many individuals and organisations still struggle to exploit the broader benefits of technology, a problem that is particularly acute for our small businesses, older people and charities that are currently at risk of being left behind.
"Go ON UK has an exciting vision to make the UK the world's most digitally capable nation, where no one, old or disadvantaged, and no organisation, even the smallest, is left behind. It's a big challenge, but it's a challenge all of us in Go ON UK are wholly committed to.
"Given the strength of our extraordinary partners, I'm confident we can deliver an outstanding national plan that will inspire real change."
Dido Harding, chief executive of TalkTalk, commented: "The internet connects and entertains, educates and informs - it even saves money. Yet there are children growing up today, in towns and cities that are fully broadband enabled, who do not have access at home.
"TalkTalk believes that every family should be able to have safe and affordable internet access and this belief is at the heart of our business."
In 2010, after being appointed the government's digital champion, Martha Lane Fox launched a two-year campaign called Race Online 2012, which is thought to have helped more than two million Brits get tech savvy and start using the web.
