The reality of the Government’s broadband rollout plans

For those readers who live in cities, towns or even reasonably sized villages, the existence of decently fast broadband is a given, and in an increasingly digital world, you can easily take for granted the ability to makes transactions online. Accordingly, the Government is targeting the rollout of superfast broadband to 95% of all homes by the end of this year and, if you’re not in that 95%, you will have at least 2Mbps.

Well, it’s December, and I don’t have either. My village of two hundred or so souls, with two hundred and seventy-five residents in the Parish, is part of the 5% not considered to be worthy of having that sort of communications access, and thus on the wrong side of the digital divide.

What that means is that school children from villages are left at a disadvantage to their more urban colleagues - how can you do research online with slow internet access? - and running a business from home is, to put it mildly, challenging. The Government want us, for example, to file tax returns online, but if you can barely download your e-mail, how likely is it that you could do so easily?

The response of the Government is not encouraging. According to the Better Braodband for Suffolk site, we are scheduled to be upgraded at some point between now and 2020, which means potentially three years of unsatisfactory access to broadband. On the other hand, our MP has advised that we’re scheduled to be upgraded into Q1 of 2018/19, which sounds more promising, albeit that I’ll believe it when I see it.

The Government seems determined to make life harder for rural communities. The decimation of village schools and rural bus services, combined with closures of pubs, post offices and bank branches, makes it imperative to be able to do more and more online, yet compared to our urban neighbours, who have all of these things relatively close at hand, our ability to do so is less than theirs. And we don’t get the range of services provided by local government in towns either.

That’s fine, as we’re pretty self-sufficient in many ways. But we’re taxpayers too, and it’s hardly an encouragement to pay one’s dues if you don’t appear to get very much for your money. So, perhaps the Government might like to pull their collective finger out?...