Government unlikely to meet targets for ‘gigabit’ broadband

The Public Accounts Committee is not convinced the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will meet its downgraded targets for the rollout of super-fast, ‘gigabit’ broadband, and is relying too heavily on commercial contractors for the progress that has been made.

Good internet connectivity is now crucial to more than economic growth and the UK’s position in the global marketplace: it is essential to almost every aspect of everyday life, from work and education to accessing public services and benefits and personal lives and family connections.

In 2020, DCMS accepted that its original plan for delivering nationwide gigabit broadband across the country by 2025 was unachievable and revised that target down to 85 per cent coverage by 2025.

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 2021 but this is largely due to Virgin Media O2 upgrading its cable network and the Public Accounts Committee says DCMS ‘has made little tangible progress in delivering internet connectivity beyond that achieved by the private sector’.

The committee argues that DCMS’ goal of full coverage by 2030 ‘does not cover the very hardest to reach areas, which include around 134,000 premises’ and it has no detailed plan in place for reaching communities where it is not commercially viable to do so.

Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “DCMS’ planning and project management show all the signs of the previous rollout – that the focus will continue to be on the easier to reach areas and there is still no clear plan for the hardest to reach communities. It couldn’t really explain how broadband has got as far as it has in this critical national strategy, beyond “thanks to Virgin Media”, and incredibly it still doesn’t have a real plan for getting the rest of the way to its own downgraded targets.

“What DCMS does know full well is it can’t rely on the private sector to get fast broadband to the hardest to reach, excluded and rural areas, and despite its repeated promises to do exactly that we are apparently little nearer to closing ‘the great digital divide’developing across the UK nor addressing the social and economic inequality it brings with it.”