Tories pledge high speed broadband for all in 10 years
David Cameron has pledged that a Conservative government would seek connections to high speed broadband networks for all parts of the country within ten years.
The Tory leader set the target during a speech on the economy on Monday. He also said that more than half the country should have access to high speed broadband services within five years.
"In Britain we have some of the slowest broadband speeds in the developed world and when it comes to investing in next generation broadband networks, like fibre optics to the home, we're doing very badly compared to countries like Germany, Japan and America," Cameron said.
It's almost inconceivable that the latter target would not be met without any government action at all. Virgin Media will complete an upgrade of its cable network - which covers approximately 50 per cent of UK premises - to the DOCSIS 3.0 standard in the middle of 2009. To begin with it'll offer a 50Mbit/s downstream service, but the equipment is capable of more than 200Mbit/s.
