High-speed, always-on access to the Internet is coming on-stream through new technologies, the UK industry minister, Michael Wills, has told parliament.

The outcome of a consultation process by the regulator Oftel was going to have a significant impact on the UK telecommunications market, he told MPs during an adjournment debate on telecommunications costs and Internet access.

He said Oftel's conclusions on how to enable broadband access, to be published this month, would have a great bearing on the government "achieving our goal of high-speed affordable Internet access for the consumer."

New technologies available

Mr Wills said many new technologies for delivering this were now becoming available:

• DSL - using existing copper telephone wires
• digital television
• cable modems
• third-generation mobile phones

He also hoped shortly "to launch a consultation on making new spectrum available for a fixed-radio broadband access service."

Bruce: Always-on is close

Earlier in the debate the South Dorset MP, Ian Bruce, said that he had been told by telecoms companies that there would be a number of announcements within weeks of "fixed-fee, online all the time" services to an Internet provider.

"The market is going to provide this for the UK ...and I think that's going to happen very, very soon," he said.

Call for government intervention

The debate was instigated by the Liberal Democrat MP, Steve Webb, who is a Social Policy professor at Bath University. The government needed to act to ensure the widescale adoption of the Internet, he said. "It doesn't look like the cultural shift is going to happen without government intervention."

Webb: Intervention needed

"We're not talking about more people having PCs, we're talking about the Web lifestyle being integral to what we do.

"America Online have just surveyed over 11,000 of their customers almost all of whom cited local call costs as the main barrier to greater use.

"It seems to me inherently unlikely that the commercial interests of British Telecom in a regulated environment are going to coincide exactly with society's best interests."