The government says the rollout means that the proportion of the UK population that can get superfast broadband has risen from just 45% in 2010 to 90%. The goal is 97% by 2020.

The village is now receiving 3G coverage through Vodafone’s Rural Open Sure Signal (ROSS) programme. Thorverton joins many other Devon communities – Chillaton, Lifton, Bridgerule, Postbridge and Newton St Cyres – on the nationwide initiative to provide mobile access to areas which traditional coverage struggles to reach.

The scheme is now supporting more than 4,700 customer sessions a day.

Launched in July 2014, the ROSS programme uses small ‘femtocell’ boxes which are placed on buildings throughout rural communities. 84 communities are now live across the country from the Shetland Islands to Cornwall and from the mountains of Snowdonia to the Norfolk coast. …”

Nearly. Her complaint that “half of people living in rural areas, and so many small businesses, can’t get a decent broadband connection” is probably based on a report produced by the regulator Ofcom last year, which is now a little out of date. Ofcom found 1.5m rural premises – about half of the total – could not get the basic speed needed to watch video and support multiple devices such as tablets, phones and smart TVs. The regulator said it would be another three years before all these premises get the 10 megabits per second (Mbps) it considers a minimum for modern users.

Things have improved since then, thanks to the taxpayer-funded BDUK scheme to wire up the countryside. The total suffering from slow connections has fallen to 25% across all rural areas, though half of those living in hamlets are still below 10Mbps. Business parks have also complained of being left out.

Ofcom said last year that only 68% of small and medium-sized businesses have superfast, with some 400,000 still waiting. The problem is not confined to rural areas. BT’s superfast broadband roll-out, which has now reached 90% of all homes and businesses, is bypassing those living in tall buildings – from council tower blocks to highrise luxury flats.

How is the UK doing compared to other countries?

Not too badly – for now. The average customer can download at a rate of 15Mbps, which means the UK ranks 20th in the global speed league. But much smaller economies such as Bulgaria, Romania and Belgium are already faster. South Korea is at the top of the pile, with 27Mbps, and Norway is in second place with 20Mbps.

The concern is that, having finished the bulk of its superfast upgrade, BT does not have sufficiently ambitious plans for the future. Homes are still connected to street cabinets by copper wires. The company plans to extend fibre-optic cables closer to its customers’ doorsteps, using a technology called G.Fast, but copper will still be used for the final stretch. BT claims G.Fast will deliver speeds of up to 300Mbps, which is more than most users need for now. But experts say the only future-proof network is one that uses fiber cables only, all the way from the exchange to the premises.

Fiber to the premises, or FTTP in telecoms jargon, is at least three times as fast and would ensure no fall in speeds at peak times. BT and Virgin Media, the two biggest network operators, plan to connect a mere 3m premises between them using FTTP. To be fair, BT says it will fill the gaps in its superfast roll-out by focusing on tall buildings, business parks and high streets. But other countries, including China, France, Portugal and New Zealand, have much bigger plans.

What would improve broadband?

Rivals say BT needs to split off its infrastructure division, Openreach, into a separate company. More than 560 TV and broadband resellers, including Sky and TalkTalk, rent their lines from BT. And these resellers say they receive a poor service, with engineers taking too long to fix faults and install new lines.

In July, MPs concluded that BT was “significantly under-investing” in Openreach, to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds a year. Funds that should be going into broadband were instead being spent on football rights designed to boost the newly launched BT Sports channels. A top-class TV service is part of BT’s strategy to stop its customers defecting to other providers.

Since BT started competing with Sky for live football, the amount collected by clubs each season has rocketed from £594m to £1.7bn. BT counters that it spends less on football than on fiber – this year it will invest £1.4bn in its network, and last year it spent £544m on sports rights.

What are the practical hurdles?

BT chief executive Gavin Patterson has threatened 10 years of litigation and a halt on network investment if the government forces through structural separation.

The BT pension scheme is a big obstacle. The largest occupational scheme in the country, its deficit stands at almost £10bn. Splitting the commitment would be a complicated and expensive business. Ofcom is proposing a middle way: legal separation. Openreach would get a board of its own, with control over budget, ownership of the network and a directly employed workforce. If this still doesn’t work, Ofcom boss Sharon White says “we would return to the option of full separation”.

Is Theresa May serious about sorting rural broadband?

Time will tell. Ofcom’s proposals for legal separation were published at the end of July, just a couple of weeks after the new Conservative leader moved into 10 Downing Street. The prime minister has not had a chance to put her own stamp on the strategy, but her keynote gave no clue as to whether she will push for a stronger remedy.

Is infrastructure spending the answer and will it happen?

Labour thinks so. It has promised to raise £500bn for investment in infrastructure, including broadband. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, last week made a more cautious case, for “very carefully for targeted, high-value investment in our economic infrastructure”. Other governments are spending in this area. Singapore has already connected every home to fiber, although in a 720 sq km city state, this was a fairly straightforward task.

In Australia, the job of wiring vast expanses of outback required special measures. Structural separation was forced on the Telstra network in a negotiation that took five years. The government committed A$30bn to fitting FTTP to 93% of homes.

Initiated under a Labour administration, the project has since been scaled back. Estimates for the cost of a national all-fiber network in the UK vary from £25bn to more than £50bn. That kind of money could probably not come from the private sector alone.

“A faster internet may help reverse Exmoor’s population decline

One of England’s remotest regions is to get some of the nation’s fastest internet connections under plans to create “Heather Valley” — a smaller version of California’s SiliconValley — in Devon and Somerset.

A network of 40 masts installed across Exmoor National Park will use microwave transmitters to relay the internet to the remotest areas, giving people sufficient bandwidth to trade on the stock market, run a hi-tech business or watch high-definition films from the most isolated of cottages. A similar network will span Dartmoor.

“Many Exmoor properties are so remote that they are not even connected to mains electricity or drainage yet, let alone the internet,” said David Wyborn, head of planning at Exmoor National Park Authority. “Most people also live in deep valleys so their phones are linked to miles of copper cable, which makes the data link too slow.

“This network should give Exmoor broadband speeds similar to the best in cities.”

The failure to bring broadband to the countryside has been an embarrassment for the government. Ofcom last week ruled that BT’s Openreach division, which runs the UK’s broadband infrastructure, should become a distinct company within the BT group, despite campaigners accusing it of “woeful levels of service” and demanding it be split off.

One aim of the Exmoor project is to reverse the area’s population decline. Just 10,200 people now live in its 267 square miles. Improved communications could draw in small hi-tech businesses and people who want to work from home.

Oliver Edwards, whose 600-acre farm and campsite lies in a deep valley, said his three-mile copper telephone cable slowed internet access. “I have to drive to Exford, the nearest village, to sort out visitor bookings or make farm subsidy applications,” he said.

Dan Jones, of Airband, the firm installing the broadband system, said people living in Exmoor and Dartmoor would pay £38 a month for unlimited phone and internet use.

“The masts are designed to look like traditional telegraph poles to minimise their impact,” he said.

TELECOMS watchdog Ofcom wants rural people to tell it about the broadband challenges they face.

Ofcom said it wanted to find out more about the “rural broadband experience” by encouraging rural people to join its research panel.

Ofcom said it existed to make communications markets work for everyone. One of the ways it did so was by conducting research to find out about the customer experience across the UK.

Each year, Ofcom reports its findings in its flagship Connected Nations report – which provides a snapshot of the state of the UK communication network.

To inform this and wider work, Ofcom is calling for volunteers to sign up to join its expanded research panel of broadband customers.

Ofcom said it was “particularly looking to sign up more people who live in rural areas in order find out more about the challenges they face”.
Potential participants are encouraged to sign up via Ofcom’s partner’s website at

https://signups.samknows.com/ofcom/

Volunteers who meet Ofcom’s sample requirements will be sent a unit to plug into a mains socket and connect to their home broadband router.

Further details of the sign-up process are set out below.

1. Broadband users sign up to take part in the research by completing an online form on SamKnows, Ofcom’s technical partner’s website here: https://signups.samknows.com/ofcom/

2. SamKnows compares these volunteers to Ofcom’s sample plan, which is designed to ensure that the panel is statistically robust and nationally representative. Please note that not all of those who volunteer to take part in the research will be selected.

3. Those who fit Ofcom’s sample plan will be asked to complete an online end-user licence agreement.

4. Volunteers are then sent a whitebox hardware measurement unit that they plug into a mains socket and connect to their home broadband router using the provided cable.

Please note that the whitebox will not interfere with the panellist’s connection as it only runs tests when the connection is not in use, and it does not monitor what the panellist uses their connection for.
Further detailed information about the process can be found at https://signups.samknows.com/ofcom/faq

If you have any questions or would like further information about this work, contact Jose Kurian at jose.kurian@ofcom.org.uk.

The Local Government Association called for a “timetable for action”, saying it was “paramount” to press on with extending broadband to all of the UK.
Ministerial changes after the Brexit vote must not delay work, it added.

The government insisted it was on track with its broadband coverage plans.
The promise to give every household a legal right to high-speed broadband was announced in the Queen’s Speech in May, as part of measures to make the UK a “world leader in the digital economy”.

The government expects an initial minimum speed of at least 10 Mbps (megabits per second) by 2020 under the new “broadband universal service obligation” (USO).

The pledge is included in the Digital Economy Bill, which will also include powers to direct Ofcom to regularly review the speed provided to ensure it is “still sufficient for modern life”.

Council leaders said they supported the creation of a national minimum broadband speed, but called for a “safety net” for those who were unlikely to be covered by the plan.

The government plans to set a reasonable cost threshold above which the remotest properties could be expected to contribute to the cost of their connection.

Mark Hawthorne, from the Local Government Association (LGA), said good digital connectivity was “a vital element of everyday life”, and key to the economy.

A minimum speed was “a good start”, but it must keep pace with national average speeds, especially at peak times, he stressed.

“Without this there is the real possibility of some areas – particularly in rural and hard-to-reach areas – falling into a digital twilight zone.”
The LGA’s call comes a day after Ofcom announced proposals to make BT’s Openreach division a distinct and legally separate company from BT to ensure “faster, more reliable broadband.”

But Ofcom stopped short of calling for Openreach – which runs the UK’s broadband infrastructure – to be spilt off entirely.

Responding to the LGA’s intervention, Digital Minister Matt Hancock said nine out of 10 UK homes and businesses could already get superfast broadband, and Britain was on target to reach 95% coverage by the end of next year.