Tories promise super broadband by 2017

THE NEW IMPROVED Tory party says that it will install "nationwide super-fast broadband" funded out of the BBC licence fee, which will deliver speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to the "majority" of homes by 2017.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne seems to have learnt a thing or two from Scottish PM Gordon Brown and won't be using income tax payers money for the project. Using the BBC licence fee that everyone has to pay anyway means that he can hide the increase in tax somewhere else.

He said cabling in rural areas could be paid for by private investors, with the licence fee making up any shortfalls. Quite who would invest in bringing super broadband to poor Labour voters in the depths of rural Wales he did not say. So far private investors have been noticeable by their absence in such projects.

Labour accused the Tories of playing 'catch-up' on broadband improvements. The government has set a target that homes should have access to speeds of 2Mbps by 2012. Currently there are still areas where broadband is impossible, or at a fairly useless bandwidth. A target of 2012 with 2 Mbps is probably more ambitious than a 2017 target with something that is impressive but so far off it will be forgotten by the time the date arrives.

Osborne told the BBC's Andrew Marr, "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."

Railways and motorways, which are things that British governments have consistently stuffed up, will be role models for the project. We notice he didn't mention the Health Service which was another state spending exercise that improved the lives of a lot of people and which is expecting a rough time under the Tories again.

Not surprisingly, Labour said the Tories are playing catch up and seem to be backtracking on their opposition to its broadband plans.

The Liberal Democrats accused the Tories of using 'fantasy world economics', pointing out that the market simply cannot provide high-speed broadband in all parts of the country in the short term without investment.

BT has said it was happy to talk to any politician who crosses its door with a nice fat subsidy to finance cable to places so isolated that they still think the Romans are in charge of the country.

Either way this a promise that the Tories can make now and you will need to have a very good memory to remember after they never fulfill it. µ