Battle for broadband wins support

Less than 2% of the total funding for broadband in the UK will be spent on superfast broadband in rural areas, Farmers Weeklyhas discovered.

The Rural Community Broadband Fund, which has opened for the second round of applications, is providing £20m in grants to communities in the 10% hardest to reach areas in England. Of this, half is provided by Defra and the other half is taken from the £530m set aside by the government for broadband delivery.

This grant is only available to community organisations in England, so individuals and organisations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland cannot apply.

Communities will also need to prove they are in the 10% hardest to reach areas in their county and demonstrate there is a need for superfast broadband in their area.

Grants will only cover a maximum of 50% of project costs and will be paid in arrears. Community members often provide much of their time and skills in kind and, while these are eligible to be claimed against, strict evidence standards need to be met.

Despite the large number of methods rural people can use for broadband delivery (as highlighted in previous weeks of our campaign), the grant is only for fibre optic broadband, arguably the most expensive and complicated method for rural areas.

It is only available to new projects and will not be given to any that have already started. Applications must be submitted online and close on 6 July.

For more information go to the DEFRA website

Not having a suitable broadband connection is costing rural businesses an average of £1,288 a year, according to our online survey.

Responents to our survey also estimated that a good broadband connection would save them 29.8 hours a month – more than four working days.

The survey, which is still available to fill in on this page, is inviting our readers to tell us your experiences of rural broadband. So far we’ve had responses from all over the UK, from Aberdeenshire to Devon, but the message is the same from every respondent: rural businesses are disadvantaged by poor broadband. Here are some of the comments.

“It’s a necessity for farming businesses. We only get about 1mbps and we are 7km from the exchange. BT won’t upgrade. It’s disgraceful. We’re only about an hour or so from London!”
Huxham, Chichester

“Broadband is a basic necessity nowadays. We struggled until three years ago trying to run a farm business and B&B with a dial-up connection. You probably think we are living in some remote part instead of in the East Midlands between Grantham and Nottingham.”
Woodside Farm, Barkestone, Leicestershire

“The poor broadband speed I am provided with, 0.4mbps, means that all online activity takes an age and adds considerably to the tasks involved. Personal usage for family communications are severely affected. When the children return from school, speeds drop so as to become unusable.”
King-Smith, Up Marden, West Sussex

Last week saw the opening of the second round of applications for the Rural Community Broadband Fund.

The £20m Defra and Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funding is designed to help the 10% most hard to reach communities get access to superfast broadband.

However, looking at the small print, it is plain to see that its effect will be minimal at best – and may even be the death of community broadband projects.

Half the funding for the £20m of grants comes from the £530m that the government has set aside to deliver superfast broadband throughout the UK but it seems to me that £10m out of a £530m pot isn’t very much. In fact, it’s just 1.8%.

Not only does it nowhere near represent 10% of the fund, which it should if the money was shared equally, if it was allocated based on need, rural areas would be given an even larger percentage because of the high costs of installation where there are fewer people over more land. This is exactly the excuse BT and other ISPs use not to invest in fibre optic cables in rural areas.

Isn’t it nice of the government to offer a grant to help rural people lay their own cables? In short, no. The government is counting on communities and individuals to put their own cash and labour in to provide infrastructure that everyone else is being given free of charge by internet service providers, funded by the rest of the £530m grant.

To make matters worse, the government will only give grants to fibre optic projects and with the condition that communities “ensure open access to the network”. This potentially allows BT and other ISPs (that could far more easily afford to lay the cables themselves) to come in once the network is built and use it to provide their own services. When factoring in the cost of creation of the network, I find it hard to imagine a community organisation that could compete with BT, which has nearly a third of the market share of broadband in the UK.

The government is taking advantage of rural people’s community spirit and generosity, not only in time and money but in getting permission for cables to be laid on farmers’ land – one of the biggest costs of fibre optic installation. Landowners are normally happy to grant their community a free wayleave, but would think differently if that access ends up being for a company making millions in profit.

It is insulting that the UK government could only find an extra £10m to support broadband in rural areas, money that is desperately needed, when it is ploughing £150m funding into 10 of the country’s largest cities to allow them “ultrafast” broadband of 80-100mbps. This is on top of the £530m already allocated.

Until the government provides adequate funding for all methods of broadband delivery in rural areas and imposes fair conditions on its grants, communities should think very carefully before asking the government for help.

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