A Tale of Two Thirds/One Third: the Background Facts……..
Jul 2, 2013The UK superfast broadband policy, as outlined in the ‘Digital Britain’ report [www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm76/7650/7650.pdf], recognised the importance to the UK economy of delivering superfast broadband across the Country. It gave targets of a universal 2 Mb/s service to all by 2012 (since put back to 2015) and 90% coverage at superfast 40 Mb/s by 2017. (Worth a read – even if only the executive summary).
BT Openreach is in the process of upgrading its core network to carry superfast broadband where it is commercially viable. About two thirds of the UK will be covered by this upgrade including Barrow and Dalton. Which leaves the final one third, where connection is not thought to be commercially viable. Colton Parish is certainly in this category.
Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) is the Body tasked with working with local authorities to connect up the ‘final third’ (Incidentally which represents about 85% of the UK land mass). It will do this with an allocation of £530m of public money and aims to stimulate commercial investment in – mostly rural – areas where investment has not been commercially viable.
To finish this piece on an optimistic note: It’s worth noting that commercial viability is constantly changing as the technology improves. It’s quite likely that areas which currently look as if they will never get a good connection will ultimately end up with one……