Tories come up with own plans for superfast broadband

In the run up to the election the Conservative Party has unveiled its own plans to provide homes and businesses with superfast broadband by 2017.

The Labour government unveiled its Digital Britain plans last year, and part of the plans outlined in the report included the implementation of universal broadband and the rollout of high speed broadband over the coming years. However, there has been a lot of controversy over the way in which the current government plans to raise money to implement these plans, the most obvious of which is the broadband tax that will be charged to those with landlines.

The Conservative Party has been very vocal in expressing its disapproval of the broadband tax, and in the run up to the election has now unveiled its own plans for the rollout of superfast broadband across the UK. According to recent reports the Tories plan to rollout superfast broadband with speeds of up to 100Mbps across the UK by 2017, and part of the funding for this could come from the BBC licence fee.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said that the rollout of high speed broadband would benefit homes and businesses, and could create jobs. He stated: “In the 19th Century we built the railways, in the 20th Century we built the motorways, in the 21st Century let’s build the super-fast broadband network that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Britain.”

He also said that when it came to cabling in rural areas the funding could come from private investors and could also come from the BBC licence fee. He said that in many cases it may not be viable for private investors to fund cabling in some rural areas, and in such cases funding could come from the 3.5 percent of the licence fee that the BBC currently puts aside for the digital switchover.

Source – BBC