Thousands of farmers could be left with slow broadband for years to come because of a “litany of failures” by government to roll out ultrafast technology to rural areas, according to a group of MPs.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said people living in rural areas “risk being left even further behind” if the government fails to raise its game on rural connectivity.

The warning comes after the UK government revised down its target to deliver nationwide “gigabit” broadband connectivity by 2025 from 100% to 85% of the country.

And its National Infrastructure Strategy does not state a target date for when it expects every home to have access to a 1Gbps-capable connection.

Between 2021 and 2025, the government has committed £1.2bn of the programme’s original £5bn budget, pledged in its 2019 election manifesto, to “subsidise the rollout of gigabit-capable broadband… to the hardest-to-reach areas”. There are no details on how and when the remaining £3.8bn will be allocated.

More than 95% of UK premises now have access to fast broadband speeds of at least 30Mbps, according to Ofcom. But about 1.6m premises, mainly in rural areas, can’t yet access fast speeds. Every home in the UK now has a legal right to internet speeds of a minimum of 10Mbps.

More than 250 small towns and villages at risk of being left behind in the digital revolution are to get next-generation full-fibre broadband over the next three years.

Millions of homes and businesses located in rural areas, from the Scottish Highlands to the Welsh valleys, have suffered from poor internet service because providers have been reluctant to build faster networks due to prohibitive costs and low economic returns. Telecoms regulator Ofcom estimates that there are about 9.6m homes and businesses situated in this so-called “final third” of the country.

BT subsidiary Openreach has unveiled plans to guarantee to build full-fibre broadband to 3.2m premises in these hard to reach locations over the next three years. Locations on the list include Thurso in the far north of Scotland, Aberystwyth on Cardigan Bay in Wales and Lingfield in Surrey. 

“This commitment will provide a great economic boost for rural areas, where it is clear connectivity has traditionally lagged behind more urban areas,” said Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance. “As we have seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, digital connectivity has been essential for the millions who are home schooling and working from home.”

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%. 

To tackle this, the government pledged £5bn in its election manifesto toward providing gigabit-capable broadband – a speed seen as the gold standard – to every household and business in the UK by 2025. This would concentrate efforts on remote rural areas that have traditionally been ill-served. 

With both domestic and business users consuming more bandwidth than ever before, it’s a timely intervention. Ofcom figures suggest that both fixed and mobile internet connections used about a quarter more data in 2019 than 2018.

However, the current proposals are watered down from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s earlier promise to provide full-fibre broadband – that is, a fibre optic cable link – to every address in the UK, which some critics considered over-ambitious. Instead, it’s now assumed that gigabit-per-second speed will be delivered via a mix of different technologies.

In some places, this will still involve laying fibre optic cable to the premises. Currently, many who use it rely on a fibre optic link only to the nearest street-level cabinet, with the so-called “final mile” (sometimes no more than a few yards) connected via copper cables.

Elsewhere, it seems more likely that faster speeds will be achieved by co-opting Virgin Media’s existing hybrid cable network. This is thought to happen largely through the use of 5G masts, which deliver a fast, wireless connection over the “final mile”. It’s believed that the government will try to broker shared-service agreements between the two companies that provide masts for the UK’s mobile networks, so that all end-users can benefit regardless of their service provider.

There has been a marked improvement in home broadband, according to an annual survey by the UK’s communications watchdog Ofcom.

It said that average fixed-line download speeds rose by 28% over the year to 46.2 megabits per second, while uploads gained by 44% to 6.2 Mbps.

It added that the typical household now consumed 190 gigabytes of data a month, in large part due to the use of Netflix and other streamed TV services.

But rural consumers still lag behind.

Ofcom said:

• in urban areas, 59% of connections delivered average speeds topping 30 Mbps over the 20:00-22:00 peak-time period – meeting the watchdog’s definition of “superfast” – while 17% were under 10 Mbps.
• but in rural areas, only 23% of connections surpassed 30 Mbps over the same hours, while 53% were under 10 Mbps.

The regulator said the primary reasons for the discrepancy were less availability and reduced take-up of cable and fibre services in the countryside.

Later this month, internet service providers will be obliged to quote average peak-time speeds in their adverts and other promotional materials, rather than the “up to” figures that have been more common.

Rural full-fibre broadband supplier Gigaclear has received permission to run cables underneath the deck of the historic Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, to bring ultrafast broadband services to rural communities in north Somerset for the first time.

Because of the unique geography of the area, the 154-year-old Clifton Suspension Bridge is the only existing crossing point over the Avon Gorge to the west of the city.

This means that while Bristol has developed into one of the UK’s better-connected urban areas, the more isolated communities on the west side of the gorge are still making do with antiquated copper networks, receiving speeds of under 1Mbps, despite being a few minutes’ drive from the city centre.

The Clifton project is being conducted under the auspices of the wider Connecting Devon and Somerset Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) project – through which Gigaclear holds a contract to address the needs of around 53,000 homes and businesses across both counties.

By running fibre cables across the bridge, it hopes to not only address the needs of locals in nearby villages, such as Abbots Leigh, but to help it roll out its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network footprint more widely into north Somerset.

“Not since 1935 has another utilities provider crossed the bridge directly, and we’re delighted to be helping Gigaclear bring this life-changing service to locals,” said Chris Booy, chairman of the Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust.

“By taking the direct route, there will be no disruption and is a win-win for everybody in the community. It’s amazing to see this monument of British engineering being utilised as a catalyst for modern infrastructure.”

By running the cables underneath the deck of the bridge itself, Gigaclear said besides avoiding road closures on a critical route, the new cables would both be shielded from the weather and less prone to damage, helping it guarantee a more resilient broadband service.

More than two thirds of English counties have slower than average broadband speeds, the County Councils Network has found.

A report produced by the CCN in collaboration with Grant Thornton, found that the average download speed for counties was 37.65mbit/s, which is below the national average of 45mbit/s.

Analysis of Ofcom data showed that in total 169 areas in England have broadband speeds below the national average. Of these, 83% are based in England’s counties.

An estimated 95% of UK homes and businesses now have access to superfast broadband, according to the government.

Landowners’ organisation the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) said achieving 95% coverage was an “important milestone” – but more work is needed to end the “digital divide” between towns and rural locations.

Figures published by www.thinkbroadband.com confirmed more than 19 out of 20 UK homes and businesses now have the opportunity to upgrade their internet connections to superfast speeds of 24Mps.

This figure is more than double what broadband watchdog Ofcom advise is required by a typical family home.

The government intends to introduce a universal service obligation (USO), which will give people the right to request a broadband speed of at least 10Mps by 2020.

But the latest announcement will be of little comfort to the “forgotten 5%” and “final 2%” who still cannot access superfast broadband – a figure which includes thousands of farms across the UK.

CLA president Tim Breitmeyer said: “This [announcement] still leaves significant areas devoid of a fast connection, critical for many rural businesses.

“Getting connections to rural homes and businesses is complex and expensive but it is essential and a crucial part of establishing fairness and balance in the economy. That is why the USO of 10Mbps that we fought so hard for, is important not only to rural areas but to the whole country.”

He added: “It is not just imperative to get rural homes and businesses connected in the first place but also to ensure the service they receive keeps pace with demand and technological change.

“The USO must be enacted in law without delay. Once it is in force, we will press for it to be constantly updated to end the digital divide that has held back our economy for too long.”

British homes and businesses will have a legal right to high-speed broadband by 2020, the government has announced, dismissing calls from the network provider BT that it should be a voluntary rather than legal obligation on providers.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said only a universal service obligation (USO) would offer certainty that broadband speeds of at least 10Mbps would reach the whole of the UK by 2020.

Broadband providers will now have a legal requirement to provide high-speed broadband to anyone who requests it, no matter where they are in the country.

BT had said it would pledge to voluntarily close the digital gap in broadband speeds between cities and rural areas, and would start work immediately, but it argued that secondary legislation could slow progress down.

However, the department said it did “not feel the proposal was strong enough for us to take the regulatory USO off the table, and have therefore decided not to pursue BT’s proposal, in favour of providing a legal right to broadband”.

A proposed £600m deal between the Government and BT’s network subsidiary Openreach to deliver superfast broadband to 1.4 million rural homes faces legal hurdles.

It is understood that legal advisers have raised concerns that a voluntary offer from Openreach could be challenged in the courts as unfair state support.

Talks between officials and the company are ongoing in the hope of finding a solution, but sources said discussions towards a voluntary investment by Openreach were proving “very challenging”. In some areas the upgrade would come on top of £1.2bn in subsidies that funded upgrades for easier-to-reach rural homes.

The Government has the option of imposing new regulations that would force Openreach to upgrade rural broadband lines when requested, but both sides would prefer a deal that they say would deliver quicker results. Ministers are keen for the final 5pc of homes that cannot receive a 10 megabits per second connection to be upgraded by 2022 at the latest.