Super-fast broadband' in UK homes by 2017 - Tories

[kk.]

As for the expenses scandal, the Tories may of made the most outrageous claims however David Cameron forced ALL his MPs to may the money back or they wouldn't be allowed to stand for the Conservative party.

Where have the Conservatives said they will "abolish support" for the lower classes? Get in the real world, just because the Conservatives are traditionally aimed at the Middle/Upper classes doesn't mean they're going to kill the working class for all they've got. Bare in mind this is a different Conservatives to the past anyway.

"UKIP Getting rid of whites", what rubbish. They've never said they'd get rid of anyone, of course they may get rid of EU nationals if we did leave the EU, but if they are British Citizens then they will remain in the UK regardless of their past and skin colour. (99% of eastern europeans are white btw).

Also you say "I'd stop moaning about the healthcare system because the only way we can afford to improve it is to increase taxes or make people pay.", you seem to be against the Conservatives increasing taxes though? Hypocrite.

Not really, if the Conservatives were voted into power in 2010, they would then have the project going on during the next five years they're in government. If they didn't get into power in the next election, seeing as most the money had already been spent and there was only two years of the project left, then the project would not be scrapped as it would be an enormous waste of money so far. Throughout politics, this goes on, governments which get into power tend to carry on previous government projects as it's too much of a waste to ditch them at a late stage.

If Britain isn't broken why does the Labour party feel the need to outline lots of changes when they've been in power for the past 13 years?

I've never heard such rubbish. How can you say "Anyone could promise this", yes they could but that's how elections happen. Parties pledge things, none of it is really promises and in the past, no one has ever stuck exactly to their manifesto is but you have to have some confidence in parties. Any party could pledge anything it doesn't mean you have to shoot down EVERYTHING. It's more than Labour is pledging anyway

As for this, I think it's important we get 100mb internet, although I think it could probably be done by 2015 if they really pushed for it, it's theoretically possible in many places atm, it's just the technology is so expensive at the moment it isn't economically viable.

Have you actually read the news article, out of curiosity? And that goes for everyone who's saying 'yay Lets vote conservative because of fast internet'. Labour has had plans for faster Internet for a while, but they are actually realistic. The whole point of the digital Britain report was to set a target for broadband speeds. No party needs to go and declare anything like this other than to get people who are tech savvy to vote for them. They won't meet this target, it's simply too far fetched. They'll simply say when the time comes 'we have 100mb broadband in 5%, and have met the digital Britain report target which was set.' or some other figures obviously lol

[StefanWolves]

2Mb speeds, realistic? you think that's realistic? oh god, oh dear.

[kk.]

realistic is that not everybody even has broadband yet, nor speeds of even 1mb. As people have said, they should sort out the problem with the current internet where people are unable to get fast speeds rather than upgrading the areas that already can. To get cables to where I live, theyd need to dig up every single road as cable stops just before a bridge.

[Jordy]

Have you actually read the news article, out of curiosity? And that goes for everyone who's saying 'yay Lets vote conservative because of fast internet'. Labour has had plans for faster Internet for a while, but they are actually realistic. The whole point of the digital Britain report was to set a target for broadband speeds. No party needs to go and declare anything like this other than to get people who are tech savvy to vote for them. They won't meet this target, it's simply too far fetched. They'll simply say when the time comes 'we have 100mb broadband in 5%, and have met the digital Britain report target which was set.' or some other figures obviously lol

Digital Britain Report seemed a complete failure to me, other than setting out plans for broadband in all areas by 2012 which I think is an important thing to do. The next step is to speed it up for the "majority" as our broadband speed averages are among the slowest in Europe.

Targets like this need to be set otherwise they will just gradually speed up judging by what the ISPs want to do, government money and guidance could speed up the speeding up process. While I think the Conservatives should of been more ambitious, it is more than Labour are offering as in the past I have never seen them pledge speeds before a certain date, unless you wish to show me otherwise. It isn't that far-fetched anyway, Virgin Media are already testing 100Mb speeds in Kent anyway, in a year or two they'll be able to roll it out into majority cities.

Bare in mind that the Conservatives said to the "majority" of households by 2017, they didn't say all (This would exclude the minority in rural areas where it's unworkable to offer them such speeds). Seeing as most people live in towns or cities, it really isn't that difficult to do however it is necessary.

[Oleh]

Just a note, Fiber-optic cabling isnt that hard to lay, seeing as nowadays its lain in sewers which is cheaper and faster than in ground, maybe 100mbps by end of the year sounds achieveable and maybe 200+mbps by 2017 seeing as most schools if not all have around 20mbit connection

[StefanWolves]

VM could have released 100MB instead of 50MB if they wanted to, but they didn't, because at that time they said their wasn't a market for it. The lines they have got are easily capable of up to 200mb speeds (I think that's what I read).

[dbgtz]

To be honest I'd be happy with 10mb, 2 is just ridiculous, infact I only get 1.5 on a good day. Whoever goes in power should sort it out, get rid of some useless benefits and put them towards coolier internet speedz. As soon as one ISP does high speeds then I will switch to them. Christ sake I just wanna play cod and be on msn at the same time

[StefanWolves]

If you get 1.5mb you're likely to be on 15mb. If 2mb was rolled out you'd get speeds of about 200kb/s which is appalling. At least if we had 100mb/200mb we'd get atleast 10mb speeds.

[AlexOC]

This would be pretty cool! I'm half way there on 50.

[StefanWolves]

Same, I'm going to 50MB on Thursday.

What speeds do you get, Alex?