The U.K. government on Wednesday revealed that 3 million premises have been covered by its rural superfast broadband scheme.
In a statement, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said it is on track to deliver at least 24-Mbps broadband to 95% of U.K. premises by 2017.
Following the recent news that BT is returning £129 million of BDUK funds to the government, the DCMS confirmed it will make the money available to local authorities to reinvest in further extending broadband coverage.
"It’s fantastic to see that the rollout of superfast broadband is now delivering for customers and for the taxpayer. The levels of people taking up superfast broadband in areas where we invested public money are beyond our expectations, and BT is now reimbursing the public purse to deliver further coverage across the U.K.," said culture secretary John Wittingdale.
Rural fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) provider Gigaclear praised the progress that has been made, but warned that getting to 95% and beyond represents a much harder challenge.
3 million is "a decent number," said Gigaclear CEO Matthew Hare.
He explained to Total Telecom that there are approximately 31 million properties in the U. K., and around 20 million of those are covered by BT and Virgin Media’s networks.
"That leaves about 10 million…and if approximately a third of those have now got superfast [broadband] service as a result of the intervention by the counties and by the government, they’re a third of the way through the job they need to do," he said.
Reaching 95% of premises by 2017 will prove more challenging than the approximately 80% covered to date, Hare warned, because these will include areas of the country that are even more remote than those already covered by the BDUK rollout.
"If they manage to achieve that, that’s still going to leave a lot of people who are getting even further left behind," he said. "The challenge really is, how do we get to 100% and what does 100% look like, and what is it that we need to deliver as a country in order to have as few people as possible left behind?"
Ernst & Young’s lead telecoms analyst Adrian Baschnonga agreed that more work needs to be done to ensure that no one gets left behind.
"Geographical availability of superfast broadband is far from uniform in the U.K. and a detailed approach still needs to be agreed on how best to connect the country’s most remote regions using alternative technologies," he said.
Ultimately though, those living in the most remote areas of the country might have to accept they may never receive superfast broadband coverage.
"If you choose to live in a croft in the remote wilds of northwest Scotland, it might be a life choice for you not to have great connectivity," Hare suggested.
