Look Out – Another UK Rural Broadband and Mobile Debate in Parliament

The Central Suffolk and North Ipswich MP, Dr Dan Poulter (Conservative), has secured a 30 minute debate on the topic of poor rural broadband and mobile connectivity for Monday next week, which will no doubt rehash many of the familiar concerns over the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK project.

The debate itself, which is due to start in the Main Chamber (House of Commons) after 2:30pm (Monday 13th July 2015), appears to be focused on connectivity in Suffolk as it is titled “Broadband in Suffolk“. A closer inspection also reveals that it’s likely to tackle issues of business connectivity in rural areas, which is something that rarely gets its own specific debate.

Interestingly Suffolk was one of the first Broadband Delivery UK areas to sign a phase 2 Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract, which aims to extend the coverage of the BT’s local “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) FTTC/P network to 95% of local homes and businesses before 2018 (here).

Prior to the above deal the original / first goal was for BT’s “fibre broadband” network to be made available to 90% of the county by the end of 2015 (note: only 85% will actually get “superfast” speeds of 24Mbps+ by that date), which looks likely to be achieved and some 90,000 premises have already benefitted.

But such deployments take time and smaller rural businesses have often complained about being overlooked in favour of connecting residential properties first.

Dr Dan Poulter MP said (Ipswitch Star):

“There is clearly that synergy between the rural areas which have bad broadband connectivity, but also have bad phone reception, and how the two can be tackled in a joined up way. There is a strong overlap between poor mobile phone and poor broadband.

If people are trying to run a business in a rural area, clearly having 4G is something that will be increasingly important.”

It’s worth pointing out that rural mobile connectivity can often be improved once good fixed line broadband has arrived by using femtocell technology, which is aptly demonstrated by Vodafone’s on-going Rural Open Sure Signal project (here). This is sometimes more cost effective than building a new mast, although the Government is pushing several projects to tackle notspots and so called partial-notspots via new primary infrastructure too.

Otherwise we don’t anticipate that next week’s debate will add anything particularly new to the many that have gone before (we can’t expect much from a half-hour window), but you never know.. there’s always room for a surprise. It’s worth remembering that until a firm plan for the final 5% is set out then some locations will remain in a disadvantaged state.