Broadband: government plans a 'paperless state'
Updated on 20 March 2010
Everyone in Britain will be given a personalised web page - where they can access all government services from healthcare to tax.
Channel 4 News has been told it will become harder and harder to, for instance, receive benefits anywhere but on the net.
Early next week, the prime minister will announce that people will be given a unique identifier to allow them to do anything from applying for a child's school place to paying council tax.
To do this, everyone will need access to fast and reliable broadband. Deploying super-fast broadband in more rural areas will cost much more, money that private companies are unlikely to be able to make back.
A broadband tax?
The three main parties agree that super-fast broadband could create hundreds of thousands of jobs, but they've divided on how to pay for it.
Minister Michael Wills and Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt discussed their plans with Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
The Conservatives recently launched their technology manifesto - with super-fast broadband right at the heart.They're promising 100 megabits a second upload and download speeds by 2017.
They say that opening up BT's infastrure will encourage more investmenbt in broadband but would help fund connections in areas left out using £130m of the TV licence fee from 2013.
The government say this money wouldn't be enough - and investment's needed now.
So they want to charge a £6 tax on every landline from this year, raising £175m.
The Lib Dems support this, provided there are exemptions to the poorest in society.
Super-fast broadband explained
All three of the major parties have agreed that access to next generation so called super-fast broadband is key to the development of the economy.
Nesta estimates that super-fast broadband at least 10 times as fast as regular broadband speeds could lead to the creation of around 600,000 new jobs.
Super-fast broadband offers speeds of at least 40 megabits a second (mb/s) to up to 1000mb/s. The current average download speed is a little over 4mb/s.
But to deliver these speeds, more homes need access to fibre optic cables.
At the moment most homes access the net through BT copper wire. The further away you are from the exchange, the slower the speed. It also varies significantly dependent on how busy the network is.
Fibre optic cable, if connected to the home, has almost infinte speeds and crucially you can upload as quickly as you download.
But few homes are connected directly to fibre.
Virgin Media do use fibre optics but in most cases the fibre extends just to the phone cabinet found in street corners.
The final part of the journey to the home is via coaxial cable which will allow download speeds of up to 200mb/s by 2012.
But it offers relatively slow upload speeds, currently around 1 mb/s. So while you can watch HD video with ease, uploading video and photos still takes a while.
Connecting fibre optic cables to every home could cost £30bn. With the difficulty of raising capital, some are worried the market leaders BT and Virgin Media will only invest in areas they think they'll find lots of customers in close proximity - i.e. the cities.
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