Labour would investigate making New Zealand music, TV shows and music available on an online platform funded through a small copyright levy on internet access, if it forms the next government.

It would also seek to expand and accelerate the rollout of the ultrafast broadband network, and investigate whether it could be unbundled from the beginning – a move described as a "radical" change by one commentator.

The party has released its information and communications technology policy ahead of the election next month.

Key points include combining the regulation of telecommunications and broadcasting – with potential ramifications for SkyTV – a greater emphasis on open source software in government and more resources for developing IT skills and for schemes to take technology to lower socio-economic areas.

Technology and communications spokeswoman Clare Curran said it would consider expanding the online film and TV archive NZ On Screen to become a platform for accessing New Zealand-made content such as movies, TV shows and music. Consumers could pay a small copyright levy on internet access, which would provide funds for the digital platform and for content creators.

"The idea needs more work, but in the absence of a mechanism to aggregate New Zealand content that seems like a good place to start," she said.

Labour would encourage new business models for distributing content, which would protect digital copyright, review the controversial Copyright Act and scrap a provision that allows the introduction of internet account suspension as a penalty. It would propose a "single powerful regulator for telecommunications and broadcasting" that would be located within the Commerce Commission, and which would investigate the impact of monopolies in both the telecommunications and broadcasting marketplaces.

Curran said that could have significant implications for SkyTV, which dominates the pay-TV market and has rights to buy exclusive sports broadcasting rights, but said it had thought hard about the policy.

Labour said it would investigate whether the UFB network could be unbundled as it was rolled out – allowing other operators to provide their own fibre services in competition with local fibre companies – rather than from 2020.

Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Paul Brislen said that could remove "any incentive to invest in the network at all". "It's quite a radical change. You'd really need to study that to see whether it undermined the business case for investment from the local fibre companies."

Curran said it would take a "sensible approach" to any changes, recognising the local fibre companies had invested in good faith. Labour would – within the limit of the $1.35 billion budget – expand the urban fibre rollout to other areas where it could be deployed "at similar costs to the existing planned rollout", and prioritise the rollout to areas currently without fibre.

It would institute a "whole of government approach to open software", including making software created for government available using open source licences, and set an aspirational target for two-thirds of agencies to be using some form of open source software for a reasonable proportion of their software needs by 2015.

Industry group NZICT said it believed all types of solutions and business models, whether they are proprietary, open-source or a hybrid, had merit, and should be evaluated on a project by project basis. National has yet to release its IT policy. Steven Joyce, Curran and ICT spokespeople from the minor parties will face off at Wellington City Gallery tomorrow evening in a pre-election debate hosted by InternetNZ.