UK’s Superfast Broadband Programme 2025 target could be optimistic, says NAO
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Faye Sutton
| 17 October 2020
A new report from the UK's National Audit Office (NAO) has cast doubt on the Government’s 2025 target for the Superfast Broadband Programme, especially as regards rollout to rural areas.
Fibre optic cable 19 OCt 2020

In July 2019, the UK government made a pledge to work towards “delivering full-fibre [broadband] to every home in the land” by 2025. It committed £5 billion of public funding to support the roll-out of full-fibre, 5G and other gigabit-capable networks to the hardest-to-reach 20% of the UK – rural and non-metropolitan areas that had traditionally been underserved as regards to communications infrastructures. And in September 2020 it announced a £22 million boost for the scheme.

The NAO report has found that along with the commercial roll-out, the Superfast Programme helped the government to achieve its target of 95% superfast broadband coverage by 2017 broadly on time. It has provided £1.9 billion of public subsidy to support the delivery of faster broadband to 5.3 million premises that are not profitable for the telecoms industry to reach. Today, 95% of UK premises have access to Ofcom's recommended superfast download speed of 30mbps, of which 17% (5.1 million premises) were reached through the programme.

However, despite this coverage, the report found that many people in the UK still experience poor broadband. It noted that suppliers to the Superfast Programme were encouraged to prioritise roll-out to the easiest to reach premises, which meant premises in rural or remote areas were left behind.

It says that rural coverage of superfast broadband is now at 80%, compared with 97% in urban areas, and is the lowest in rural Northern Ireland, at just 66%. Only 57% of UK premises that have access to superfast broadband are signed up to superfast packages as they may be unaware that faster services are available, may find their existing service sufficient, or consider faster services too expensive. Consumers may also not experience their advertised broadband speeds for several reasons including factors in the home.

The existing broadband infrastructure has been put to the test in the Covid-19 pandemic. Ofcom considers the existing infrastructure to have held up well, although some stakeholders representing areas with large rural populations told the NAO that the pandemic has exacerbated the rural-urban divide.

The report notes that so far, the government has prioritised increasing broadband coverage over speed. It says that in trying to deliver gigabit-capable broadband to the final 20% of premises by 2025, the government must manage the tension between meeting the Future Programme's deadline and serving those in greatest need, adding that it has set a challenging timeline in promising nationwide gigabit coverage by 2025.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: "The Superfast Programme extended the nation's broadband connectivity and helped people to work and study from home and stay connected during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the UK has a broadband network that does not reach everyone and is not fully futureproof. Less than a decade after launching the Superfast Programme the government has identified the need to upgrade the broadband network again.

"To deliver the government's vision of achieving nationwide gigabit connectivity… it must manage the tension between meeting a challenging timeline and serving those in greatest need. Failure to do so risks leaving the hardest to reach areas even further behind and widening the urban-rural divide."