Half of UK landmass still without high-speed broadband as government trumpets rollout success

Many homes and businesses still cannot get high-speed broadband because of failures to connect the 'last mile'

The rollout of superfast broadband across Britain is proceeding according to plan, according to Ed Vaizey, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy, with 90 per cent of homes set to be connected by the end of this year.

Interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today, Vaizey expressed confidence that the government, in partnership with BT, will hit its longer-term target of connecting 95 per cent of homes and businesses to superfast broadband by the end of 2017.

"It's going really well. We're past three million premises, we set ourselves a target of 90 per cent between now and 2015 and I think we're going to reach that target, and we've set ourselves a target of 95 per cent of premises in the UK by the end of 2017 and I think we'll hit that target as well," he said.

"We have the best broadband of the big five economies in Europe; we will go further," Vaizey promised.

However, critics of the government's superfast broadband programme say the rollout is neither fast nor extensive enough. Many of these critics live in areas of the country that cannot be considered remote, such as Redditch, Lancaster and even Pimlico in Central London, where coverage by superfast broadband (defined by the government as providing download speeds of greater than 24Mbit per second) is patchy or non-existent.

The BBC interviewed a number of business owners who, despite living close to fibre-optic cables running alongside major trunk roads, are unable to access superfast broadband because BT is contracted by government only to provide fibre to the cabinet and not to individual businesses. The last step of the process – connecting villages and individual premises – is often left to local authorities, which are required to negotiate with BT or other providers, if available.

One small business owner said he had to commute 15 miles each way from his home in Somerset just so that his architectural practice could access high-speed broadband.

"The quality of the broadband service here is abysmal. It's very difficult to operate with a poor-quality service and increasingly difficult to plan ahead for the business to actually grow in this area," he said, adding that he saw no sign that this would improve any time soon.

Some interviewees blamed local authorities for "not negotiating hard enough with BT", but Andrew Leadbetter, spokesman for Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS), said BT was demanding "twice as much" money for completing the rollout as the authority could afford, and that the planned phase two of the rollout had had to be abandoned. In June he told V3 why the £35m contract had been shelved.

"I am only too well aware of how important good broadband connections are to our rural businesses and residents. But we're committed to delivering value for money for our residents in everything we do. In all conscience we couldn't sign up to this new deal because it just didn't deliver," he said.

In many areas BT is the only player, reducing the scope for negotiations. When it cannot or will not deliver, homes and businesses are left to fend for themselves using satellite technology or (where available) Wi-Fi, both of which are expensive.

Christopher Price, head of policy for the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), a membership organisation for owners of land, property and businesses in rural England and Wales, told the BBC that the government's superfast broadband programme is not sufficiently ambitious.

"The target itself isn't sufficient for most businesses, particularly rural businesses," he said.

"The government defines superfast broadband as 24Mbits but the EU will require us to have superfast broadband of 30Mbits by 2020, so we're already planning to be in the second string. Most importantly, there are still five per cent unaccounted for with no targets and no promise of when rural businesses and farmers will be able to access broadband the same way as everyone else."

Arguing that broadband is a utility that the state needs to provide "in the way you have a universal postal service", Price said the government should be looking at other technologies and providers to complete the last mile if BT would not.

"Something has to be tweaked, and we're not only talking about remote areas. We're looking at about half the landmass of the UK that will not have superfast broadband, and it is not just small pockets – there are some very large pockets," he said.

Others have said the current approach exacerbates the differences between digital haves and have-nots.

"There is a risk in the current approach that improving service for those who already have it will leave even further behind the rural farms, businesses and homes who have little or none," Anne McIntosh, Conservative MP for Thirsk, Malton and Filey told Computing recently.