Last year, the government named four areas of the UK that would be piloting a scheme to bring high speed broadband to rural areas. The Countryside Alliance, however, have revealed through Freedom of Information requests that the local councils in these areas are yet to implement these plans, having received no money from the Treasury or started working on their networks.
Chancellor George Osborne announced in October 2010 that Cumbria, Herefordshire, the Scottish Highlands and Islands and North Yorkshire would all be piloting the scheme for introducing super-fast broadband networks to rural areas. However, the Country Alliance believes that unless the process is simplified, the money assigned will be wasted; meaning the digital divide between urban and rural areas will increase.
Chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, Alice Barnard is quoted as saying: “It has been over a year since these pilots were set up and the people who live in areas with no or unreliable broadband coverage haven’t seen any improvement.” Although a government spokesperson claimed that all four pilot schemes were progressing well and reiterated the government’s belief that by 2015 Britain would have Europe’s best broadband network.
While super-fast broadband is being rolled out in urban areas at an impressive pace, efforts to get the same standard of service to more remote parts of the country have been significantly slower. Various telecoms companies such as BT and Cable & Wireless have tendered bids to build the rural networks and now it is down to the local councils in each area to sort through them and decide which company to choose.
This bidding process, however, is proving to be costly to both the councils and the companies vying for the network build contracts. Herefordshire council revealed their spending on the pilot has so far reached £50000 while Japanese telecom company Fujitsu claims the bidding process has cost them many hundreds of thousands of pounds. In fact, they revealed recently that they have completely withdrawn from bidding for the Highlands and Islands contract because “the sums did not stack up”.
Despite this and Cable & Wireless pulling out of the bidding for Cumbria due to concerns over the process, a spokesperson for Department for Culture Media and Sport said the government “remained confident” that the target would be reached.