The importance of making good connectivity available across the entirety of the UK cannot be emphasised enough. In today’s increasingly digital age, access to a fast and reliable internet connection can no longer be viewed as a luxury. Instead, it must be seen as an absolute necessity
How having good broadband has become essential to modern life
The importance of making good connectivity available across the entirety of the UK cannot be emphasised enough. In today’s increasingly digital age, access to a fast and reliable internet connection can no longer be viewed as a luxury. Instead, it must be seen as an absolute necessity.
Digital connectivity has by now become ingrained in all aspects of our daily lives and access to fit-for-purpose broadband is crucial to businesses, communities and individual households. Nowadays, good broadband is quite rightly seen as the fourth essential utility alongside gas, water and electricity.
Over the last couple of decades, businesses of all sizes have recognised the key role that the digital world has to play in commercial success. Whether enabling direct online transactions or being leveraged as an online marketing vehicle to communicate with potential customers, the Internet has transformed 21st-century business.
Simultaneously, access to high-quality broadband has if anything been even more transformative for individuals and communities. Initially accelerated by Covid lockdowns, hybrid working is now the new normal for millions, but the ability to work from home effectively is of course utterly dependent on good connectivity – those working from home need to be able to remotely access office-based systems and data efficiently and engage in video meetings without freezes or drop-outs.
The exact same is true when it comes to day-to-day personal admin activities such as interacting with government agencies like HMRC, the DSS, the DVLA or the NHS. As just another example, it is nowadays nigh on impossible to book a flight or holiday without doing so online.
Fast broadband is every bit as important in the fields of learning and leisure. When it comes to education, from secondary school onwards, there is an ever-growing dependency on the Internet as a means of distributing central syllabus material and submitting coursework. As for free time, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the nation’s viewing habits now revolve around streaming video and TV on demand.
Unfortunately, not everyone can benefit from the explosion of the online world over the
last couple of decades. A sharply marked discrepancy exists between digital “haves”
and “have nots”, with many primarily rural areas significantly disadvantaged and stuck in the broadband slow lane.
The Digital Divide: Its root cause
Those living in towns and cities are lucky enough to access high-speed broadband from a wide choice of providers. But those living in rural locations are nowhere near as fortunate and all too typically have to struggle with frustratingly slow internet connections. This disparity between urban and rural broadband is known as the Digital Divide.
The fastest broadband service available is delivered over full fibre, which means that the full extent of a property’s connection to the internet is supplied over fibreoptic cable. However, it is important to understand that the broadband which the majority of UK homes and businesses still have is delivered from a fibre- connected streetside cabinet but then down a property’s copper telephone landline. If a property is near that cabinet, it should see broadband performance around 70 Mbps – and even if it is 1,000 metres away, speeds around the 30 Mbps mark should be deliverable.
Problems start when a property is over a kilometre away from the cabinet serving it. In such cases, the broadband signals travelling along the landline get unavoidably weaker through something called attenuation as they pass down that long run of copper wire. Internet speeds will then unavoidably be frustratingly slow.
The only landline-based solution is to have another cabinet deployed nearer affected properties – but this is a very expensive and time-consuming operation, costing tens of thousands of pounds and taking many months.
In cases where going to those lengths would only benefit a handful of properties, the likes of BT Openreach and other major infrastructure providers will not undertake such work because it won’t be commercially viable.
This is precisely why more widely scattered homes and businesses are very liable to suffer with frustratingly slow internet – and why they are not likely to get a traditional solution any time soon (if ever). This is a problem primarily faced by more rurally located properties, which are simply excluded from being able to benefit from the ever-growing number of advantages that a fast broadband service offers.
Sizing the problem and understanding its effects
In its definition of what it has termed a “decent” broadband service, Ofcom has set a surprisingly low bar of “greater than 10 Mbps”. Its latest Connected Nations update (Summer 2023) reveals that across the United Kingdom, there are still at least 428,000 business and residential properties that cannot access broadband offering that minimum level of performance. This means that there are well over a million people suffering from acute digital deprivation.
The lion’s share (c. 80%) of those 428,000 broadband-starved properties are residential premises and as mentioned above, the vast majority are to be found in more rural locations. It must be acknowledged that the debilitating impact on residents and business owners of having no access to fit-for-purpose broadband is severe.
Well-connected communities enjoy improved educational, professional and personal outcomes and see higher economic growth and social well-being levels. In stark contrast, rural areas stuck in the digital slow lane are less attractive places to live, work and visit and risk being left behind as other areas reap the benefits of the digital revolution.
Poor digital connectivity is one of the core factors behind rural decay, simply because of the lack of opportunity to which it gives rise. There has long been a tendency for younger people to migrate away from rural locations as they seek better employment prospects. This causes the shrinkage of such communities and may result in their effective disappearance.
Adding to this is the inexorably increasing closure of physical facilities within rural communities, such as banks, post offices and retail premises, which puts further strain on those currently living more rurally.
With the rise of the online world, the provision of good quality connectivity has the potential to stop this trend in its tracks and in fact to reverse it. The ability provided by effective broadband for hybrid or even fully remote working could by itself be transformational for the rural UK.
The socio-economic benefits of closing the Digital Divide
Areas and communities that are the most digitally deprived must see not only continued but significantly enhanced levels of digital investment. The arguments for this are undeniable, both from a moral and an economic standpoint.
With our increased reliance on digital connectivity, those that suffer with the greatest degree of digital isolation are clearly those most in need of assistance. They inevitably face a range of disparities ranging from limited employment and education outcomes to reduced access to essential services and these debilitating disadvantages cry out to be addressed as a matter of the highest priority.
But there are also direct economic benefits to doing so. Improving digital connectivity does not only help individuals but also drives renewed economic growth in digitally deprived areas.
A recent report from the Centre of Economic & Business Research states that investing more in digital transformation outside of major population centres and specifically taking targeted action to improve rural connectivity has the potential to boost the UK economy by over £65 billion, with the creation of over 280,000 new jobs in those less populated and typically more disadvantaged environments.
For those rural areas, many which have to date been deprived of such investment in digital infrastructure, the effect would be as revolutionary as it is crucial, with digitising the economy in these areas a huge first step. Just to pick out one telling example, the National Farming Union has consistently highlighted the impact of a lack of digital connectivity on its members who so often are at the heart of their communities.
Most recently it revealed that 18% of its membership still had broadband speeds of less than 2Mbps and in fact that only 48% stated that they had speeds sufficient for the needs of their business.
The impact of improved digital connectivity just on farming businesses would be transformational as it would be for the areas in which they operate.
Government efforts to improve nationwide connectivity
Project Gigabit
Project Gigabit is the UK Government’s flagship broadband policy with an objective of providing 85% of all UK home and business properties with access to gigabit-capable broadband by the end of 2025. Admittedly, all of its £5bn budget has yet to be allocated, but its current progress already highlights clear issues within its approach, given that it is solely focussed on the roll-out of full fibre broadband.
Although according to Ofcom, the Government does seem to be on track to reach its self-set target by the close of 2025, when it comes to the improvement of broadband in rural areas, the devil is very much in the detail.
With well under 18 months to go until the Government’s self-set target date, data supplied by both Ofcom and DCMS/DSIT clearly shows that, in order to reach its objective, Project Gigabit funding is in the majority of cases being applied to more densely populated areas that are easier and cheaper to provision.
Analysis of data both from Ofcom’s regular reporting and gained through a Freedom of Information request submitted to DCMS (now DSIT) reveals the following key points:
- 50% of UK homes that have no access to what Ofcom defines as “decent” broadband via landline lie within regions that have yet to receive any funding at all from Project Gigabit.
- The already well-served South East and East of England have received the most funding from Project Gigabit to date, with both regions each receiving over £250m.
- Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are yet to receive any funding from Project Gigabit, along with Yorkshire and the East Midlands.
- Scotland fares the worst in the UK for broadband with well over 60,000 residential properties unable to access broadband speeds of 10Mbps, the surprisingly low minimum level that Ofcom has defined as representing “decent broadband”.
Ofcom’s latest Connected Nations update, published in September this year, reveals that there are over 428,000 UK premises that still cannot get that minimum threshold of “decent” broadband down a landline. Over 75% of those digitally deprived properties are homes and a staggering 50% of those residential properties without access to acceptable broadband have yet to benefit from any Project Gigabit funding. That represents over 320,000 individuals and families who cannot perform the most simple of online tasks that others take for granted, such as video calling or streaming.
Despite some funding being distributed, there are significant and counter-intuitive disparities between regions. The South West, which has the greatest number of premises in England unable to access landline broadband at speeds higher than 10Mbps, has only received £42.3m from Project Gigabit, whereas both the South East and East of England have received over £250m each. This equates to the East of England receiving over £13,000 per property and the South East over £9,000 per property unable to access 10Mbps compared to just £887 for the South West.
Furthermore Scotland, which according to Ofcom has almost 65,000 broadband-starved homes and which is by some considerable way the poorest UK region for connectivity, has to date received no project Gigabit funding. Nor has Wales, Northern Ireland, the East Midlands or Yorkshire. In fact when the data is examined more closely, only one out of the ten local authorities with the very worst broadband connectivity in the UK lies within a region that has to date received any funding from Project Gigabit.
The irony is that solutions to radically improve the connectivity of the nation’s most digitally disadvantaged homes and businesses exist today. They are both cost-effective and extremely quick to deploy – but they simply don’t enter Government’s solely fibre-fixated thinking.
Given the clear and growing disparity between digital “haves” and “have nots” in the UK and Project Gigabit’s failure to address more remote and more difficult-to-provision areas, it seems inevitable that the Digital Divide will only get worse. Far too many rural properties are still endlessly waiting on the distant promise of full-fibre broadband – and yet the Government is ignoring proven alternatives which would dramatically improve such communities’ connectivity at a fraction of the cost of fibre.
This is counter-intuitive to say the least, because under Project Gigabit, full fibre connectivity is being funded for properties that already benefit from perfectly good broadband performance, while properties in more rural and harder-to-reach areas, which are typically those suffering with the poorest landline broadband speeds, are being excluded.
It is of course a given that expanding the roll-out of full-fibre broadband is a good thing for the nation as a whole. However, it is almost impossible to understand why other solutions are not also being funded for those who have the very worst current connectivity – simply put, why are those most in need being left out?
Government efforts: The universal service obligation (OR USO)
The Government has also implemented a program called the Universal Service Obligation for Broadband, with two nominated providers – Kcom in the vicinity of Hull and BT Openreach for the rest of the UK. The USO was intended to be a vitally important digital safety net, as it gives those properties unable to access a landline broadband service meeting the national minimum broadband standard of 10 Mbps download speeds the legal right to demand a service that at least reaches those performance levels. Sadly, it is simply failing to achieve its objectives.
This is due to three core issues; far too many digitally deprived homes and businesses are simply not aware of the USO’s existence, the process of provisioning improved broadband under it takes far too long and most significantly of all, it’s all too often unreasonably costly.
As already mentioned, latest Ofcom figures reveal that there are over 428,000 UK premises that experience speeds below the national minimum standard of 10Mbps via fixed-line broadband. It is therefore noteworthy that, according to BT’s own latest report detailing its progress under the USO, only 1,038 requests for better broadband were made under the USO in the six-month period between Oct 22 and Mar 23. Given the size of the problem, this would strongly suggest a lack of public awareness of the scheme.
More surprising still is that, of that already extremely modest number of requests made under the USO, over 92% were deemed not to qualify, leaving just 79 requests being accepted as eligible from October 2022 to March 2023. Most startling of all is the revelation that of those 79 valid requests, only 49 actually resulted in a customer placing an order for improved connectivity. That means that of the total number of significantly digitally deprived UK homes and businesses, only 0.01% of those got assistance with their connectivity under the USO in a six-month period.
As well-intentioned as the USO scheme may have been, the single biggest issue underlying what can only be described as its abject failure revolves around the costs faced by those attempting to get improved broadband under its auspices. The USO’s terms state that if the cost of provisioning improved broadband to any eligible requesting property exceeds £3,400, the customer must pay any difference if an order is placed.
As these excess costs very regularly run into tens of thousands of pounds if not more – as this case study from Derbyshire clearly evidences – it is hardly surprising that the USO is showing such a low take-up and proving to be such an ineffective safety net for the most digitally deprived.
Sadly, the only possible conclusion is that the Universal Service Obligation for Broadband is a policy that is simply not fit for purpose.