Ministers aim to trumpet the fact that superfast broadband is available to 3m homes and businesses on Wednesday and say they are on track to reach 95 per cent of the UK by 2017 — but rural communities remain to be convinced.
Politicians in country areas are sceptical of the “superfast” claims — defined as a minimum speed of 24 megabits per second.
“I don’t believe the numbers,” says Ian Liddell-Grainger, Conservative MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset and co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on rural broadband. “In West Somerset I should think coverage is about 40 per cent.”
MPs such as Mr Liddell-Grainger doubt not only what the government says it has achieved but also its ability to meet targets such as “near-universal superfast broadband” for rural Britain by the end of the parliament in 2020. To meet this goal it has heavily subsidised broadband introduction to parts of the country that are more difficult to reach under its £1.2bn BDUK programme.
For those in the tenth of the country with no access, such promises are worth little.
“There are so many ways a lack of broadband affects us,” says Nigel Duke, who lives in Luxborough, a village on Exmoor in south-west England. “It’s children who can’t do their homework; farmers who can’t fill in the forms the government demands.”
Luxborough, like many other farming communities, is struggling to diversify economically. The lack of broadband access — barely 10 of its 200 residents can use the available public service — makes it difficult to attract tourists, sell homes or attract businesses, say residents and local companies.
Local MPs bemoan the lack of a strategy for bringing broadband to those still without it, let alone pay for it. The Conservative government, focused on deficit reduction, is considering shifting the cost from the taxpayer and on to broadband providers.
Unsurprisingly, this is not a prospect welcomed by BT, whose taxpayer-supported Openreach programme is the main mechanism for delivering broadband.
“There will be further government funding needed to get from 95 per cent — no question of that,” says Bill Murphy, BT’s managing director of next-generation access.
“The funding the government has put in place so far will not take coverage to 100 per cent and we’re lobbying to fill in that gap,” concurs David Hall, a Somerset county councillor and a board member of Connecting Devon and Somerset. The local authority partnership, which Mr Hall describes as “an intervention programme to reach the parts other beers cannot reach”, was set up to deliver broadband to areas in the two counties where the market has failed to invest.
For local residents and their representatives, money is only part of the problem. Mr Liddell-Grainger says Connecting Devon and Somerset and programmes like it across the country have failed to deliver on their mandate. “We set this up and there’s no accountability whatsoever.”
He says getting superfast broadband was the priority for voters in his constituency during the recent election campaign, and he acknowledges that government has “dropped the ball”.
“I’ve never seen anything like this absolute shambles [on superfast broadband rollout] in 15 years in government,” he says.
But Mr Liddell-Grainger believes BT is also shirking its responsibilities. The company strongly denies such claims and defends Openreach’s record, citing its recent announcement that it was returning nearly £130m of taxpayer money after exceeding its 20 per cent take-up target. Gavin Patterson, BT’s chief executive, says the programme has delivered fibre network access to four out of five homes and businesses and is a “real success story for the UK”.
“Our Openreach engineers have worked tirelessly to connect some of the most remote parts of the UK, from Shetland and the Hebrides to the moors of south-west England,” he says.
Such boasts ring hollow in the many communities across the country that still have no superfast access and little imminent prospect of getting it. Some, such as Stamford Brook outside Manchester, have been forced to go it alone, drumming up funding to pay for access from local businesses such as Waitrose and Redrow, and from Trafford council.
In Luxborough, residents are also losing patience. They question the tortuous and opaque tender processes run by CDS, which recently resulted in BT being thrown off the second phase of the programme in Devon and Somerset. Its latest decision — a £4.6m plan to provide broadband to much of Exmoor through a network of masts and radio signals — has elicited particular concern.
“This may be right for remote farmhouses, but it is not right for the villages on Exmoor,” says Mr Duke. “Why should the taxpayer pay for installing less reliable, more complex and slower technology?”
Village yearns for the right connections
Nigel Duke says that if he and his wife were buying a house now, they would not move to Luxborough because of its poor internet access.
Mr Duke, who works as information chief for Brammer, an industrial maintenance company, has spent years trying to get local authorities and BT to deliver superfast broadband. The village’s main money-earners are hill farming and tourism, but the lack of proper broadband means some of its 200 residents commute 140 miles a day, and visitors often do not return “after the children find out there’s no WiFi”.
Luxborough has tried private internet initiatives involving both wireless and satellite, but with limited success. And the latest decision by Connecting Devon and Somerset, the body responsible for getting broadband to more remote areas, to split off Exmoor and Dartmoor national parks in a separate tender meant that BT did not even bid for it. Instead, CDS has given the contract to Airband, a Worcester company, which will use masts and radio signals to get broadband to the moors’ communities.
The £4.6m project will set the taxpayer back £790 a household on average, a cost CDS says is “better value” than BT, which has said it could provide fibre broadband to Luxborough for £785 a household.
Matt Ballard, CDS officer, says a wireless point-to-point network is “ideal” for the national parks. “It’s an innovative solution that was tested thoroughly through the procurement process. It’s not a temporary stopgap,” he says.
But local feeling is running high. Airband’s technology will require at least 17 masts over the picturesque landscape. Local people are concerned that Airband’s claims that the technology will deliver superfast speeds are overblown.
ISPreview, an independent website, says wireless technology of this kind fades over distance and as it passes through solid structures. “Most consumers never receive the top speed of any given wireless technology, sometimes even when they’re standing right next to the source,” it says.
Mr Duke says it is particularly frustrating that the local BT exchange in Washford will be upgraded in October to support fast fibre-based broadband and Openreach is bringing this to Roadwater, five miles down the valley.
“I’m extremely angry about it because we’ve been told so many times it’s going to be solved,” he says. “And it’s just not.”