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Urban areas still plagued by poor broadband speeds despite Government’s gigabit plans

People living in cities and other urban areas are still subject to poor broadband speeds

City dwellers and people in urban areas across the UK are struggling with poor broadband connectivity as the Government’s plans to upgrade the UK gigabit-capable broadband come under renewed criticism.

The Government hopes to deliver gigabit-capable broadband, with speeds of at least 1,000 Mbps (Megabits per second, the rate at which data is transferred – the equivalent of downloading a Blu-Ray film in two minutes) to at least 85 per cent of the UK by 2025.

The UK’s average fixed line broadband download speeds reached 51.48Mbps last year, ranking 43rd out of 224 countries assessed by telecoms analysts Cable.co.uk.

A Public Accounts Committee report attacking the Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) for making “little tangible progress in delivering internet connectivity” was published earlier this week, warning that it was “still not convinced” it would meet its 2025 target.

While the proportion of premises in the UK with access to gigabit broadband leapt from 40 per cent to 57 per cent between May and October last year, this was largely down to Virgin Media O2 upgrading its cable network and not Project Gigabit, it said.

The DCMS has adopted a “one-size-fits-all” approach to what it considers urban areas, particularly with London and the West Midlands, which fails to “take into account the very different needs within those areas”, the report found, pointing out that predominantly urban settings can have some rural areas within them.

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Despite being within the same region, Birmingham and the Black Country are likely to have different connectivity requirements, while Edmonton in Greater London was an example of “pockets of very poor service in a largely urban area,” it added.

A DCMS spokesperson said it was “misleading to suggest we are reliant on the commercial sector to hit our target which we remain on track to meet”.

“We are investing £5bn so hard-to-reach areas can get gigabit speeds, have already upgraded 600,000 premises and in three years national coverage has rocketed from six per cent to 65 per cent,” they said.

“Our policies and investment also mean 97 per cent of premises can access superfast broadband which meets people’s current needs and helped us through the pandemic.”

Appointing local “digital champions” in areas where broadband requires improvement would help providers to install gigabit-capable broadband as quickly as possible, the Local Government Association (LGA) suggested.

“Councils need more funding to support telecommunication providers to deliver improvements on the ground,” Cllr Mark Hawthorne, digital connectivity spokesperson for the LGA, told i.

“This will be essential to avoiding local bottlenecks and the slowing down of delivery.”

Andrew Glover, chair of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) said the Government and Parliament needed to do more to remove the barriers preventing effective roll-out to reach nationwide coverage.

‘The internet was never good, but the pandemic has exacerbated it’

While the Government has focussed on connecting hard-to-reach areas, proximity to bright city lights is no guarantee of decent broadband coverage.

David Christie, who lives on the border between Greenwich and Deptford in southeast London, was forced to upgrade his phone’s data plan to tether off it after his broadband become unworkably slow during the pandemic.

“The internet was never good, but the pandemic has exacerbated it,” he said. “Our street appears to be the only one in the surrounding area with no fibre, and Openreach says it has no plans to upgrade the area.”

“It’s the same for our neighbours – we all have jobs and we all need better internet, but we can’t get anyone to help us at all.”

Nikhil Saglani, who lives in Barnet in north London, was unable to make Zoom calls while working from home during stay-at-home orders.

“I actually had to swap rooms with my grandma because my room (aka my office when I was working from home) wasn’t receiving WiFi,” he said.

“I spent hours on the phone to my provider over the space of just a few months but they just said the area wasn’t able to provide a better speed – it’s a bit leafy around here, but it’s hardly the countryside.”

Openreach, the division of BT that oversees the cables, fibres and wires to nearly all homes and businesses in the UK, said it “consistently championed the need for faster action on broadband policy”.

“We know Full Fibre infrastructure can deliver huge economic, social and environmental benefits for the UK. We agree with the Committee that there are still too many barriers preventing industry from building even faster, addressing these should be a priority starting with bolder action to address access to land and property,” said Catherine Colloms, MD Corporate Affairs at Openreach.

“Full Fibre’s the gold standard compared to hybrid copper/fibre cable networks, and we’re investing more to build it faster and further than any other company in rural and urban parts of the UK.

“But building in rural areas is expensive and complex, so if we don’t want communities to be left behind, everyone needs to play a role, not just Openreach.”

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