The pledge to provide high speed broadband to every home in the UK has been abandoned by the government in an attempt to save money.

Instead fast broadband will only be provided in rural areas on request because, according to a Whitehall document, “it is unlikely that everyone will want to be connected”.

Campaigners and MPs accused the Government of giving up on providing people in the countryside with a fast internet connection.

Many of those affected live in parts of England which otherwise have a good a connection such as Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Dorset and Kent.

The Telegraph is launching a campaign urging ministers to provide broadband to more families living in harder to reach rural areas.

Superfast speeds are on course to reach 95 per cent of the UK by the end of next year through a roll-out programme run by BT and the Government

A year ago, then-Culture Secretary Sajid Javid acknowledged that reaching the “final five per cent” in rural areas would be “challenging”.

But he said: “The benefits of superfast broadband are clear from increasing productivity and economic growth to transforming family entertainment at home.

“We hope to find ways in which those benefits can be brought to even more people.”

Last November David Cameron, the Prime Minister, announced a new law to make a broadband connection a “universal service obligation” to give people the legal right to a 10megabits (MB) per second connection no matter where they live.

However, according to a consultation on the new law, ministers have given up on delivering superfast broadband automatically to the “final five per cent”.

It said: “It is unlikely that everyone will want to be connected, even if that option is made available to them, and so we do not believe that an additional broadband roll-out programme at this time is proportionate or would represent value for money.”

It also emerged that people living in the countryside will have to pay for any additional cost of connecting them to a good broadband speed.

Ed Vaizey, the Culture minister, admitted “there might be an element where individuals would have to contribute in order to get it” a basic 10MB speed.

He told MPs: “It is important that there would be a potential cap on the amount of public funding or industry funding contribution.

“If a particular connection was going to cost many, many thousands of pounds, as is the case with a landline, you might have to have a cap on the per-premises funding that would come under the USO.”

The plans were attacked by MPs and campaigners, who said it would “leave behind” people who live in the countryside.

Grant Shapps MP, the former Conservative party chairman, said: “We need a universal service obligation which provides the same minimum broadband speed whether you are in town or country.

“Bureaucratic pen-pushers seem content to think it is OK to leave people in the countryside in the internet slow lane.

“It’s a known fact that once people have high speed broadband their usage expands as they discover new ways to work from home, download smart TV and generally benefit from enhanced communication.

“We need to take the simple view that broadband is the fourth utility and accept that everyone has a right to their super-fast connection.”

Countryside Alliance head of policy Sarah Lee added: “This is very disappointing.

“The whole point of a universal service obligation is that it applies to everyone, and this one was suggested specifically to ensure that the most rural, hard-to-reach properties will enjoy workable broadband speeds.

“High speed broadband is an essential service for modern life and we believe a lack of broadband capacity in rural areas is holding back the countryside, socially and economically.”

“It is worth sticking with plans to bring high-speed internet to every corner of Britain?

For those who live, farm or run businesses in Cumbria, east Yorkshire or the West Country, these are frustrating times. For years they have lagged behind urban Britain in access to high-speed broadband and all that flows through it. Their frustration may be about to boil over.

This government and its coalition predecessor have in principle grasped the importance of investing in internet infrastructure. Two years ago David Cameron called broadband the “fourth utility”.

Last year Sajid Javid, then secretary of state for culture, media and sport, undertook to extend “superfast” access beyond the 95 per cent of premises who have been promised it by 2017. To this end he announced funding for a series of pilot projects, using novel technologies and business models where conventional ones had not attracted private investment, to bring 21st-century broadband to the furthest reaches of this country.

This admirable ambition is now in danger of being shelved. Ed Vaizey, Mr Javid’s successor, hinted as much last month. A government consultation document released since then argues that reaching the last 5 per cent would not represent value for money. Further, it suggests that people in remote areas would be unlikely to take up the offer of superfast broadband even it was available.

Providing high-speed connections for windblown islands and peninsulas is more expensive on a per capita basis than for blocks of flats and offices. Even so, pulling the plug on superfast for all would be infuriating for those directly affected and a false economy for the rest of us.

More than a million premises hoping for faster broadband may be denied it. Lives are not threatened, but livelihoods are. Broadband has acquired so many roles so quickly that businesses depend on it to expand. Investors base their decisions on access to it. Schools depend on it to thrive and farmers, the elderly and those on benefits need it as their principle connection to public services that are increasingly provided online.

“The benefits of superfast broadband are clear,” Mr Javid said last year. The pilot projects he championed are yielding progress. Their technologies, using mobile and satellite telephony where landlines are uneconomic, have global potential. It would be a mistake for both the public and private sectors to give up on the “final 5 per cent”. It would be an even graver blunder, however, for the government and regulators to use arguments about the 5 per cent as an excuse to neglect the 95.

The average British broadband connection speed rose last year by 27 per cent to nearly 29 megabits per second (Mbps). This is impressive by past standards but it masks huge variations and a fundamental structural problem. British broadband is a hybrid product of privatisation and piecemeal regulation, overwhelmingly dominated by BT and its Openreach subsidiary.

Yesterday BT (re)announced a £6 billion investment in its network. Its rivals, who depend on it, protest that this is not enough. They have a point. More for its shareholders’ sake than its customers, BT is investing in copper-based technology rather than state-of-the-art fibre optics.