UK homes and businesses gain right to high-speed broadband

The government has announced that every home and business in the UK will have a legal right to high-speed broadband services by the year 2020, rejecting BT’s voluntary proposal to provide the same services.

After a final consultation this week, the government revealed its new Universal Service Obligation (USO) which legally mandates it to provide a broadband service to all properties in the UK with a minimum download speed of 10Mbps.

Crucially, it means that service providers must provide high-speed services to any customer who requests it no matter where they are located in the UK.

BT had pledged to voluntarily “close the digital gap” between urban and rural areas in terms of network speed by rolling out a £600 million scheme to hard-to-reach areas.

Sky Broadband and TalkTalk took exception to this, however, threatening a judicial review as they anticipated that BT would merely recoup their investment by raising customer fees.

A statement issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport 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”.

The government’s digital minister, Matt Hancock, added his warning that the agreement would not necessarily mean every property automatically gained access to a high-speed service; rather, each home or business has the “right to demand it”.

He added that he hoped the scheme would see the UK match many other parts of the world in terms of broadband speeds.

“This is the next big drive we have got to do as a country,” he said. “Our rollout of super-fast has been the fastest among comparable countries. The drive to get the full fibre connections, the future-proof connections, started only a year ago. I’m absolutely determined to see that rolled out.”