Tories promise to 'turbo charge' UK broadband

Shadow Digital Britain minister Jeremy Hunt promised 100Mbit/s across the UK

Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt reconfirmed today that a Conservative government would endeavour to provide 100Mbit/s broadband to the population of the UK if elected in May.

Hunt said at the National Digital Inclusion 2010 conference today that offering high-speed broadband remains the Tory Party's key priority for the future of digital Britain.

"We want to make the UK the first country in the European Union where the majority of the population have access to symmetrical 100Mbit/s broadband, both for downloads and uploads, to help turbo charge the network," he said.

Hunt also confirmed that the party would break BT's dominance in this area by forcing the telecoms giant to open its ducts to allow other operators to lay cables in the network.

The MP added that, while the Conservatives agree with Labour that market forces alone are not enough to reach the third of the UK population currently not able to access broadband, the two parties diverged over the controversial landline duty.

"We believe that taking a portion of the BBC licence fee, currently used to fund the digital switchover, is the best way to fund the rollout of broadband in rural areas, particularly as the BBC has said it wants to get its services, particularly the iPlayer, to the rest of the nation," he said.

Yesterday at the conference Stephen Timms, the Labour minister for Digital Britain, defended his party's 50p landline duty, describing it as a small price to pay to help get the rest of the UK online by 2012 with 2Mbit/s speeds.

The Conservative Party sought to promote its IT credentials further today with the launch of a Technology Manifesto.