Tories blow smoke over high-speed broadband

Conservatives mistakenly compare fibre networks with copper networks

The Conservative's Technology Manifesto was launched yesterday with several laudable aims, however its ambitions seem confused.

One claim in the manifesto says: "We will be the first country in Europe to extend superfast 100Mbit/s broadband across most of the population...this is up to 50 times faster than Labour’s planned broadband network."

However, the Tories are not comparing like with like. Labour has made two promises, the first for the delivery of 2Mbit/s to be universally available to all the UK by 2012 - mostly delivered through copper-based networks. The second is for widespread rollout of next-generation optical fibre for the delivery of superfast 100Mbit/s broadband by 2017 and to 90 per cent of the population.

The Tories promise is identical to the government's second commitment, and yet they are comparing this promise with the first.

The one difference is that the Tories do not specify the percentage of the population that will have access to the next-generation optical fibre.

They also argue in the manifesto that this high speed broadband network will help to create 600,000 additional jobs.