Government Seeks Views and Experiences of UK Rural Broadband UPDATE

The National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE), which is collaborating with the UK Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) team within DCMS, has launched a new survey that seeks views and experiences of rural broadband connectivity from small and medium-sized businesses (SME) present in such areas.

The survey aims to learn more about current digital connectivity, its uses, opportunities and challenges in rural areas. The responses will then be used to inform future service development and support for rural businesses by the Government, although it’s unclear precisely what new information this might reveal that isn’t already extremely well understood through many years of past surveys, reports and deployment projects.

“Through this research, BDUK is looking to build a more comprehensive evidence base of the current connectivity conditions for rural SMEs, learn from those taking up faster connections, and find out the uses there are for gigabit connectivity and the differences it makes for businesses,” said the announcement.

However, the focus on “gigabit connectivity” above may overlook the fact that the issue isn’t always about the top gigabit speed of a new broadband service, but the fact that you have the flexibility to get that top speed once demand arises (future proofing). This is as opposed to the current situation, where many rural communities continue to be hobbled by weak mobile signals and extremely slow copper broadband lines.

Melanie Thompson-Glen, Business Development Manager at NICRE, said:

“For the majority of firms, broadband connection is key to running a successful business, but this can be problematic in rural areas.

We know from our previous research that for many firms it’s a major obstacle to embracing digital technologies and they are therefore missing out on the opportunities that offers, however, that won’t be the case for others.

We are delighted to be working in partnership with BDUK on this survey in order to get a fuller picture of the situation across the country and would encourage rural businesses – whatever their experience of broadband connection – to complete the survey.”

All of this is intended to support the Government’s new £5bn Project Gigabit programme, which aims to help further improve the picture for gigabit speed connectivity by using state aid to target upgrades toward the final 20% of hardest to reach premises (i.e. helping to extend gigabit coverage to at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025 and then “nationwide” by 2030) – commercial operators alone are expected to do c.80% of the UK.

The survey itself can be found here and will remain open for SMEs to respond until Thursday 31st March 2022, which is a surprisingly short window for feedback (it usually takes a few weeks just for the word to get around). Alongside the survey, NICRE and BDUK are holding a workshop in Newcastle to further explore businesses’ experiences, if any firm would like to get involved or find out more, email nicre@newcastle.ac.uk .

UPDATE 6th April 2022

The survey has been extended and remains open. At present, a date has not been set for its closure.