The Conservatives will begin roll-out of a superfast internet infrastructure over the course of the next seven years if they're voted into power in May. With the bandwidth drains and speed requirements of todays web users, it'd be an essential plan for any future government.

They say that their aim is to get 100Mbps broadband piped into the "majority" (let's hope that doesn't mean an election majority - sometimes as low as 34%) of homes by 2017, with part of the cost planned to be covered by the BBC License Fee. Taking money from programming to put it into an internet roll-out might seem odd, but if the future of on-demand services (like the BBC's iPlayer) is to be successful, faster connections with fatter pipes are what is called for.

Rural locations will have their cabling provided by private companies, but if this isn't lucrative for those private entities, then up to 3.5% of the License Fee could be transferred for broadband roll-out.

They also said that homes should have, and there should be universal, access to at least 2Mbps by 2012.

[BBC]