Launching its “technology manifesto” the party said that under a Tory government Britain “will be the first country in Europe to extend super-fast 100 mbps broadband across most of the population”.

The Conservative manifesto pulls together several policies, including a “right to data” which allows people to request government information on issues such as crime statistics,   schools’ performance and traffic.

The Tories have also to pledged to publish all central government and quango spending over £25,000, including contracts, on the internet.

Initially, the company’s target was the end of 2012 but is now confident that it can get the network deployed to 40 per cent of the population before the London Olympic games begin.

Ian Livingston, BT’s chief executive, said: “The programme is ahead of schedule. Given the progress we’re making, four million homes will have access to fibre by the end of next year.

“2012 will be an important year for the UK,  because of the  Olympics, and so I’m keen we provide ten million homes with access to fibre by the time the games begin,” he continued.

However, plans to roll out NGA to the rest of the population are still very muchsurrounded by doubt and mystery – BT has said that there is “no economic case” for extending the network beyond 10 million homes at the present.

But Chancellor Alistair Darling has said that the Labour government wants 90 per cent of the population, about 25 million homes, to be connected to an NGA network by 2017.

These plans, which haven’t been fully outlined, would presumably depend a great deal on private investors being found and Labour winning next year’s general election.

BT is also celebrating hitting the five million customer mark. Chip-shop worker Elizabeth Patterson of East Kilbride, Glasgow, will win a trip to Vancouver to see the winter Olympics.

“Broadband has the ability to transform people’s lives and the fact that we are still showing strong take-up when there are more than 14 million ADSL broadband customers in the UK is testament to the unique benefits of being connected,” said managing director of BT’s consumer division, John Petter.

The top 10 fixed broadband providers only saw an average of less than 1.4 million net additions per quarter, compared to 1.9 million per quarter during 2007/2008

On an absolute scale, Deutsche Telecom (DT) added more broadband subscribers from Q4 2006 to Q2 2009 than any other ISP in the region, accounting for 22% of all top 10 operator net additions, or 4.1 million. France’s Iliad and SFR were the fastest growing operators during that period, each with a compound quarterly growth rate (CQGR) of 6.7%. Germany’s Vodafone and DT followed with a CQGR of 5.2% and 4.7%, respectively.

“While the rest of the region is still trying to stabilize following the global financial crisis, stronger macro-economic fundamentals and consumer confidence have allowed German and French telcos to achieve the fastest 10-quarter subscriber growth rates as well as maintain some of the highest growth rates in the first half of 2009,” said SNL Kagan senior analyst Ben Reneker.

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He defended   the 50p-per-month broadband tax, which the Tories  have already said they’ll scrap if they win next year..

Carter compared the so-called Broadband tax to the television licence. “As a country we are still broadly willing, with some notable objectors, to spend £142.50 per household per annum, with appropriate exemptions for certain households, in a hypothecated tax called the licence fee to provide us with high quality public service British content,” he said.

“It seems a credible proposition that we should be more than willing to invest £6 per household per annum, with appropriate exemptions for certain households, to facilitate and accelerate our infrastructure upgrade.”

Figures released by the OECDput the UK 21st in the table of 30 countries ranked by consumer Internet access speeds.
The top ten included Japan’s 1Gb/s, Finland’s 110Mb/s, and the 100Mb/s offered by Finland, Sweden, Korea, Iceland, France, and Denmark. The UK is even beaten to the post by the the Netherland’s 60Mb/s, and the 50Mb/s available to residents of the United States and Spain.

The OECD said
government investment in broadband technologies is sorely required – with benefits being felt in electricity, health, education, and transportation sectors should funds be allocated to broadband development. The OECD’s Taylor Reynolds believes that “if you cut 1 percent off the costs of education, electricity, health and transportation you would more than pay for a fibre network” and each sector would gain far more than it would lose.
The UK government will have to take serious action to improve matters. With the UK 21st out of 30 in terms of raw speed – and a not much better 13th out of 30 in terms of overall penetration.

There  seems to be some sort of ideological impediment to the UK government investing in the infrastructure. The UK is much more orientated to trying to get private investment.

Long Term Evolution technology, also known as 4G, is theoretically capable of providing browsing speeds of up to 150 megabits per second over the mobile phone data network, compared to the maximum speeds of about 7.2 megabits per second currently available in the UK for mobile broadband access.
“We are pleased to collaborate with Huawei [which made the dongle] on this LTE trial,” said Derek McManus, chief technology officer at O2. “It will allow us to better understand this emerging technology and prepare us in offering our customers next-generation mobile broadband services in the future.”
The Government recently  pledged universal broadband access for all by 2012, at speeds of at least two megabits per second. Moble broadband i seen as a cheap way of doing this.
The 4G technology has already been successfully trialled in Scandinavia,two 4G networks have been completed in  Oslo and Stockholm. Swedes and Norwegians could be logging on to the LTE network as early as next year using a laptop and dongle. Britain does not want to fall behind in this race.

However he technology uses the 800Mhz spectrum, a similar range to that used by set-top boxes and other TV equipment which means that it has the portential to interfere with TV pictures.

With a thrown in for good measure is pulls data down from the internet at up to twice the speed of its previous 3.6Mbps USB stick, meaning BBC iPlayer will rollwith ease, wherever you are as long as  assuming you’ve got a decent signal.

According to Talktalk, which is UK’s largest consumer broadband service provider, we can hold our nerves for only 502 seconds before we lose our temper. Technology-related tantrums are prevelant with most of us likely to wait for 3m38s for a web page to load before hitting the buffers.

The research also showed that on average we can expect to stay on hold on the phone for 5m4s before breaking down and 13m16s for someone to reply to a voicemail or text before reaching our patience’s limits.

Mark Schmid, Communications Director at the TalkTalk Group, commented on the document saying that “the speed of the online world is making us less prepared to wait for things to happen in the offline world. This is prompting people to reach the point of impatience earlier than ever before.”