1 in 10 rural English and Welsh properties don’t have superfast broadband option
Well here’s a surprise….
The overall UK superfast coverage figures may have 96.33% of the UK with a 30 Mbps or faster broadband option and in England it is marginally higher at 96.86% but lower in Wales at 95.1%.
What these overall figures hide is the variation that occurs and the biggest level of variation is down to whether properties are in a rural or urban postcode, so in rural England and Wales superfast coverage is down at 89.5% versus 98.6% in urban areas. Things get worse as you head into the very obviously rural areas where 1 in 5 don’t have access to a superfast option.
The total number of premises in England and Wales is 26,794,267 and whether a postcode is classified as rural or urban is determined using the standard ONS classifications. Coverage and number of premises is based on an analysis run overnight on 4th and 5th May 2020. Local authority level rural and urban splits are available but for brevity are not included. We will at some point May 2020 publish the Scottish figures too.
The good news for now is that the two rural definitions are ahead in the availability of full fibre, but the figures do make it very clear why there is still complaints about availability of broadband services and the chorus gets louder the further you head out from the urban sprawl. We are seeing the lead in FTTP coverage shrinking as urban areas see roll-outs from firms such as Openreach and CityFibre.
The poor superfast broadband coverage figures will have people wondering what was the point of all the BDUK projects, at which point it is time to look at a county level figures, where the rural superfast coverage in Suffolk has gone from 82.3% to 91.7% in the last two years. The urban coverage level in Suffolk in May 2018 was 98.7% and at the weekend when the county splits were calculated was 98.6%.