The Government’s giving up on rural fibre broadband

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Chancellor Alistair Darling’s pledge of £250m to help Britain achieve universal broadband might sound like progress – but it’s practically an admission that rural areas will never get high-speed fibre connections.

The amount of money on the table is derisory. BT is spending £1.5 billion on bringing fibre-to-the-cabinet to 10 million homes across the country, and BT is (so far) concentrating on urban areas where deployment costs are lower. Does the Government really think it can bring even 2Mbit/sec broadband to the whole of Britain on a sixth of the budget?

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