Rural Broadband Time-Scales In Danger Of Sliding

Government plans for rolling out broadband to the “final third” of Britain, the rural communities, has come under attack from the Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG).

The organisation believes that the roll-out will fall behind schedule because there is still much research required in finding the best technologies for the job.

Pioneering Work Needs Tighter Deadlines

“There’s a lot of work going on, but it’s complicated and there’s a lot to learn still about what the best and most effective approaches will be,” Antony Walker, CEO of BSG told Broadband Finder.

“It’s important to recognise that nobody’s really done this before in terms of building out next-generation networks into challenging rural locations and therefore it takes time to work out how to get it right,” he said.

BSG has been highly critical of the government’s over-optimistic view of rural broadband installation. The idea of planting digital hubs around the countryside by 2015 will be difficult to fund in the current frugal financial atmosphere and the reliance on hard-pressed local authorities to supervise the work will be challenging.

The plan is to launch four pilot schemes to discover the best method for delivering broadband to remote areas but these will not be put out to tender until April, it is believed. To stop the project from sliding, Comservative MP Peter Aldous has asked culture minister Ed Vaizey to specify application dates for these schemes. The estimated cost of this phase is £50 million.

The rural broadband scheme is seen as an important step to boost employment in rural areas. Existing businesses, such as farms, would benefit greatly from improved communications and new “cottage industries” would be able to thrive. BSG and other organisations have expressed their support for the initiative but doubts have also been voiced about prime minister Cameron’s low target of delivering “better than” a 2Gbits minimum of bandwidth.