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ViaSat Study – UK People Confused by Government’s Broadband Strategy

Tuesday, Nov 22nd, 2016 (12:33 pm) - Score 834

A new TNS survey of 2,012 British “adults” aged 16-64, which was commissioned by Satellite provider ViaSat, has revealed that 72% don’t believe the Government is doing enough to meet future broadband needs, while many others are confused about the reality of current service coverage and speeds.

At present fixed line superfast broadband (24Mbps+) capable networks are available to 91% of premises across the United Kingdom and this should reach around 98% by 2019, which is being achieved through a mix of both commercial (private) and public investment.

Over the past few years’ the amount of public funding that has been committed towards related improvements has reached £1.6bn and the Government has today announced another major investment programme (here), which could push an additional £1bn+ towards helping with the roll-out of future Gigabit capable FTTP/H based “ultrafast broadband” connectivity.

However the respondents to ViaSat’s survey revealed that many people remain dissatisfied with the Government’s effort and quite a few appeared to be confused about what has actually been achieved.

Study Highlights

* Fewer than half (48%) of respondents believe that they can access superfast broadband in their area, which is despite UK coverage reaching 91% of premises (as above).

* 77% believe broadband expansion is disproportionately focused on London and the South-East, while 66% say London has the fastest broadband in Great Britain. In reality London has plenty of patchy problems with slow broadband and is certainly not the fastest city or part of the UK by a long shot.

* 79% would accept disruption to their home in order to get faster broadband, which is good news for the many operators that will need to conduct disruptive civil works during their network roll-out.

Consumers also expect that their data needs (consumption) will increase by 2.4 times over the next two years, which is quite close to the reality. On top of they expect that modern broadband speeds should be, on average, at least 60Mbps and this is about “2.5 times faster” than the Government’s current 24Mbps+ commitment (note: some contracts use 30Mbps+). Mind you the 24Mbps+ target is not an average, but rather a minimum.

Neil Fraser, ViaSat UK’s Head of Space and Comms, said:

“Despite the Government’s best efforts to roll-out superfast broadband across the UK, it still has an uphill perception battle to fight. The work of the Government and other organisations is not being recognised by the consumer.

According to the survey, British consumers see themselves as a nation that is disconnected, which is in stark contrast to the Government’s own statistics showing the vast majority have access to superfast services today.

This failure to deliver in the eyes of the British public comes at a time when British broadband has been under scrutiny; Ofcom just completed its review of Openreach, and 100,000 UK citizens voiced their opinions on the nation’s broadband initiatives via the ‘Fix Britain’s Internet’ campaign.

This is all the reason for the UK Government to show not only if and how they are reaching 90% of the population today, but even more importantly how they plan to reach 100% of the nation in the future.”

Naturally ViaSat doesn’t miss the opportunity to play up their vested interest by suggesting that Satellite broadband solutions are now “increasingly capable of offering the speed and coverage that the UK needs, both now and in the future. This means that the UK Government can meet the demands of the population head-on, and demonstrate that it is dedicated to bringing a truly democratic internet.”

However Satellite is far from an ideal solution, with speeds often suffering from heavy throttling at peak times and data allowances tending to be both meagre and very expensive to top-up. Likewise the high latency times afforded by such services can break fast-paced online gaming, as well as cause other sync problems for latency sensitive apps.

Lest we forget that the average speed of 60Mbps touted by respondents above is not yet viable via domestic Satellite broadband (20-30Mbps tends to be the current level).

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 .
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