About £55 million (E66m) is the forecast surplus from the £200m set aside of the BBC license fee for Digital UK to promote DSO. The switch has gone more smoothly than expected, leaving the company responsible for informing customers, Digital UK, with a projected £55 million surplus that will be handed back to the government in 2012.

This surplus is in addition to the £250 million expected to be left over from the so-called “digital help scheme”, a pot of money set aside to pay for the most vulnerable in society to get digital TV. The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, confirmed last week that the government has already set aside that extra cash to finance the rollout of broadband in rural areas.

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