Britain's rural broadband speeds 'slower than ex-Soviet countries'

The European Commission has told the government it does not do enough to provide people living in rural areas access to high-speed networks.

Currently, rural communities in Britain receive worse superfast broadband coverage than Slovenia, Lithuania and Estonia. Just 45.9 per cent of Britain's rural premises in 2014 had access to superfast broadband in 2014 — superfast broadband being defined as connections offering download speeds of at least 25 Mbps. This compared poorly to the national average of 88 per cent — “substantially below” the average service coverage offered to people living in former Communist states.

The overall EU superfast broadband coverage average is 25 per cent, and the report shows that Britain is lagging behind Estonia (57 per cent); Slovenia (58 per cent) and Lithuania (59 per cent). Compared to Western Europe, the numbers are even more damning. Switzerland has 89 per cent coverage, Belgium 84 per cent, Netherlands 97 per cent and Luxembourg 98 per cent. Furthermore, Malta has 100 per cent coverage.

The report also shows that Britain's rural families also have the worst access to high-speed mobile data connections in Europe. Just 9.4 per cent of country dwellers have access to the highest standard of mobile internet, against a 27 per cent average across the European Union. The results show that Britain has a worse coverage than rural Romania (17 per cent), Spain (20 per cent) and Hungary (15 per cent), while the highest performing countries such as Denmark and Germany have 98 per cent and 78 per cent coverage respectively.

Grant Shapps, the chair of the British Infrastructure Group, said of the figures: “This new report confirms something we have suspected; our broadband just isn’t up to it, especially in many rural areas of the UK.

“It flies in the face of industry claims that 95 per cent of the country is adequately covered with high-speed broadband. Instead, it describes a picture of slow or non-existent broadband services in too many rural communities. This not only holds back businesses but also prevents families from keeping in touch or working from home.”

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(Image: Kainet)