After The Countryside Alliance made a number of Freedom of Information requests to local councils in rural areas, it has emerged that little has been done with the budget in excess of £40 million that was assigned to four pilot schemes designed to deliver broadband to many rural communities over a year ago.
The schemes cover Herefordshire, Cumbria, North Yorkshire and the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Although some progress has been made in Cumbria, none of the money allocated to local councils in Herefordshire and the Highlands and Islands has yet to be spent.
According to the BBC, Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, said “Unless more is done to simplify the process of acquiring and implementing rural broadband projects, the digital divide will continue to grow and the money pledged by the Coalition will remain all but worthless.”
Despite the dissatisfaction of The Countryside Alliance with the way that the money has been handled, experts have pointed out that there are numerous difficulties associated with rolling out superfast broadband services. The pilot councils themselves have noted that Government funds are only released when the councils have spent money on rolling out services.
Speaking on this issue, Andrew Ferguson, the co-founder of website Thinkbroadband noted: “In some ways if councils are able to self-fund the early stages of the consultation, design and procurement process, then it means the bulk of the funds will be available for actual solutions to improve broadband coverage and speeds.”
At present, most of the major broadband providers will not venture into rural areas on their own, as they feel the demand is not high enough to be cost effective. This leaves the local councils alone in finding ways to implement these networks, with no central knowledge base to refer to. Experts believe that if upgrading rural areas to super fast broadband continues to be viewed as a selection of small issues, rather than a national initiative, this pilot will continue to flag.