No new broadband roll-out programme, study says

The government will not push through another national broadband roll-out programme, which would have ensured its universal service agreement of providing every person in Britain with access to 10Mbps connections by 2020, according to its consultation document.

According to the report, written and issued by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, it has said that “an additional broadband roll-out at this stage would neither be proportionate or represent value for money”.

The new Universal Service Obligation (USO) will ensure citizens' right to get a 10Mbps service from internet service providers and the document states that the technology must be neutral, as in “the technology that is used to deliver the speeds must not be prescribed by one company”.

The previously state-funded Superfast Broadband Programme commenced in 2010 and is on track to provide 95 per cent of the UK with so-called superfast connectivity by the end of 2017 and that all homes were now receiving basic speeds of around 2Mbps. However, industry regulator Ofcom noted that 8 per cent of premises in the UK are unable to receive speeds above 10Mbps.

The document stated: “We currently estimate that, even with BDUK’s existing intervention and continued commercial rollout, up to 1 million UK premises will not be able to access speeds of 10Mbps or higher by the end of 2017.

“We have to encourage the market towards ubiquitous ultrafast services, but balance the additional benefits of increasing speed against the costs today of providing the infrastructure. As technology advances, costs of deploying faster speed connections should drop, making faster connections more viable and more extensively available."

The consultation period for the new USO is expected to last for another two weeks.

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