Broadband News

Conservatives plan ‘fastest broadband in Europe’

Friday, 12 March 2010

By Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

The Conservative party has unveiled ambitious plans to deliver high speed broadband across the country within seven years.

The announcement was included in the party's Technology Manifesto.

Although Labour has outlined similar plans to make superfast broadband available to 90% of the UK by 2017, the Tories said that extending 100Mb broadband to "most of the country" would create a network "50 times faster than Labour's planned broadband network and make the UK a hub for the creative industries".

Shadow Culture Secretary John Hunt said: "Our plans will give Britain the fastest high speed broadband network in Europe, helping to create 600,000 additional jobs. We will make the British government the most technology-friendly in the world, and meet our ambition that the next generation of Googles, Microsofts and Facebooks are British companies."

Labour is currently working towards its Universal Service commitment to bring 2Mb broadband to all homes by 2012, and plans to fund next generation broadband networks though a 50p tax on all landlines.

However, the Tories said that they would ditch the controversial tax, hoping that the market would deliver most of their plan, but possibly using some of the BBC licence fee as well.

The manifesto also included other plans such as a "right to data", allowing people to access government information on topics like crime statistics, schools' performance and traffic, a pledge to publish all central government spending over £25,000 and a promise to end the government’s reliance on just a few big software suppliers - making IT projects more competitive.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “We are already on our way to building a next generation network that rivals other counties. BT Broadband (www.BT.com) has launched its Infinity fibre optic broadband packages with speeds of up to 40Mb broadband and Virgin Media (www.Virginmedia.com) has promised to boost its 50Mb broadband network with a new 100Mb package later this year.

“There are also a range of smaller, city-wide fibre networks cropping up across the country. The Fibrecity projects in Bournemouth and Dundee, for example, can already offer speeds of up to 100Mb broadband, and some packages even offering the ability to boost of a massive 1Gb.”

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