Competitiveness minister Stephen Timms wants stakeholders to discuss bottlenecks to progress

The UK government-convened summit of broadband industry stakeholders will meet today to discuss the future of the UK's communications infrastructure.

Competitiveness minister Stephen Timms called the meeting to address investment bottlenecks holding up the development of next generation networks capable of handling data at 100Mbit/s.

Though the UK is a world leader in the price and availability of first generation broadband, it is slipping behind in the roll out of upgraded services.

Super high speed networks are regarded as being vital to the future growth of business. The Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) says the UK should aim to be a market leader by 2012.

But taking upgrading existing copper telephone networks with fibre to the home could cost up to £15bn.

Ofcom is also conducting a consultation on the regulatory regime needed to boost infrastructure investment.