Tory Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt says it will take until 2015 before every home in Britain has at least a 2Mbps broadband connection.

The Labour governments target for universal broadband coverage was 2012 but Hunt has now said that this is not pactrical. He reportedly told a gathering of telecoms operators ‘ I have looked at the provision the governement has made to achieve this by 2012 and I am afraid the I am not convinced that there is sufficient funding in place,so while we will keep working towards that date , we have set ourselves a more realistic target of acheiving unversal 2 Mbps access within the lifetime of this parliament’

Currently 99% of homes can get some form of broadband connection but almost 2 million homes cannot get speeds of 2Mbps. Broadband services were launched over 10 years ago and still almost 160,000 rural and remote households cannot get broadband at all.

Hunt has made it clear that he wants Britain to have the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015 and that is it vital the next generation of broadband networks, offering speeds of up to 40Mbps,is made available to virtually every household.

However BT has warned that it is not economically viable to offer superfast broadband accross the whole of the country. BT have estimated that up to £2 billion of state funding would be needed to achieve universal fibre optic broadband in the future. BT itself has committed to spending£2.5 billion to extend its new fibre optic network.

Hunt has suggested opening up the water mains and sewers to cut the cost of building new networks although he does agree that the commercial operators cannot work alone and help is needed from the governement.  

Labour had all0cated about £250 million from the digital switchover fund to pay for universal broadband along with a 50p per land line tax. The tax was abolished in the Tory June budget.