Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

Deloitte – Patchy Broadband Putting Northern Powerhouse At Risk

Friday, Sep 25th, 2015 (11:38 am) - Score 1,209

A new study from financial firm Deloitte has warned that slow / patchy broadband connectivity could be leaving small and medium sized businesses in the North West of England at a disadvantage, particularly those in the more urban areas of Liverpool and Manchester.

The research, which examined what type of broadband services were available at just 12 key business locations in Manchester and Liverpool, found that only 4 (Sharp Project, Little Peter Street, Cheadle Royal, Birchwood Park) could access an ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) service and none were able to get ultrafast FTTP.

Simon Hearne, Senior Manager of Deloitte’s North West Team, said:

Some larger businesses have the cash reserves to put fibre down themselves, while others can share faster connections they have in different parts of the country through Ethernet services.

However for smaller companies, slower connections can be a real issue. For instance, businesses in the creative industries typically deal with lots of images and video – large data that needs fast connection speeds.

Fibre coverage is a priority for the government and there has been plenty of investment in recent years, but it’s not yet benefited all businesses on the ground.”

Sadly we have been unable to locate the original report and without that it’s difficult to properly examine the findings. For example, the Manchester Evening News only seem to focus on FTTC and FTTP, but there’s no mention of Virgin Media’s cable network or whether the availability of other alternatives has been properly examined.

The government has of course been putting a lot of effort into improving national connectivity through its Broadband Delivery UK programme, although EU state aid rules mean that related funding can generally only be used in less dense rural or suburban locations.

Outside of that the Government has also been offering Connection Vouchers (up to £3,000 a pop) to help connect smaller businesses to superfast broadband, but this only works best in areas where the underlying connectivity is already available (it doesn’t make much of a dent in overall network coverage).

Inside cities the private sector is often to blame for poor connectivity, where the case for commercial investment without recourse to state aid should be significantly easier to make. Frankly if you can’t keep dense urban areas up-to-date with something better than ADSL2+ then something is clearly wrong and it shouldn’t take state aid to fix it.

On the flip side we shouldn’t forget that the private sector isn’t standing still and there are various commercial developments underway. For example, the Get Digital Faster project is working to improve connectivity around ‘Greater Manchester’, while Virgin Media is expanding their ultrafast cable network in the city (here) and Hyperoptic are rolling out FTTP/H to some of the related areas (Liverpool etc.).

Not that existing coverage is all that bad, yet there’s clearly room for improvement and if true progress is to come then the local city authorities could certainly be doing more to drive that forward. Vouchers alone are not enough and some operators may have a vested interest in delaying the build of affordable business alternatives to their expensive leased lines.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £24.00
132Mbps
Gift: None
Shell Energy UK ISP Logo
Shell Energy £26.99
109Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £27.99
145Mbps
Gift: None
Zen Internet UK ISP Logo
Zen Internet £28.00 - 35.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £15.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
YouFibre UK ISP Logo
YouFibre £19.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £21.00
150Mbps
Gift: £25 Love2Shop Card
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (5473)
  2. BT (3505)
  3. Politics (2525)
  4. Openreach (2291)
  5. Business (2251)
  6. Building Digital UK (2234)
  7. FTTC (2041)
  8. Mobile Broadband (1961)
  9. Statistics (1780)
  10. 4G (1654)
  11. Virgin Media (1608)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1451)
  13. Fibre Optic (1392)
  14. Wireless Internet (1386)
  15. FTTH (1381)

Helpful ISP Guides and Tips

Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon