UK Farmers Angered by Lack of Broadband and Online Only Government

The Government’s on-going “digital by default” strategy to push more services, such as tax management and farming subsidies, into an online-only state of availability has once again incurred the wrath of farmers due to the lack of adequate broadband provision in many isolated rural areas.

At present the government’s £1.2bn Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) and related projects aim to make fixed line superfast broadband (25Mbps+) connections available to 95% of people across the United Kingdom by 2017 (rising to 99% in 2018 via wireless and mobile solutions). The final 5% will then receive speeds of at least 2Mbps, although this is only a universal service “commitment” (USC) rather than a legal “obligation” (USO).

But so far the BDUK roll-out of BT’s predominantly ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable hybrid fibre FTTC technology has tended to focus more upon larger towns, villages or sub-urban areas than the truly remote rural locations. Indeed it’s expected that the project will achieve coverage of around 90% by the end of 2015 and yet most rural areas actually exist in the final 5-10% and many will thus have to wait even longer for a good connection.

As a result the current complaint has cropped up repeatedly over the past few years because many farmers naturally reside in remote locations where Internet connectivity can be problematic and in some cases even unusable. The latest group to chime in on this concern is the Tenant Farmers Association, which was formed in 1981 by a group of farmers who felt that their interests were not being “forcefully represented by existing bodies“.

George Dunn, CEO of the Tenant Farmers’ Association, told MPs (Yorkshire Post):

“A big concern for us is the Government’s drive to digital communications. We are quite happy to encourage our members to go for the digital solution (but) frankly, there are a large number of individuals who will not be able to make the transition, and they should not be penalised because of that.”

The Government intends to add applications for European farming subsidies to its list of online-only services in 2015 but clearly a lot of farmers, especially those who lack both the connectivity and IT skills needed to keep pace with such changes, will perhaps rightly feel disadvantaged. Similarly many MPs would like to see a paper-only application process retained until suitable connectivity becomes available and this seems like a common sense approach.

A study conducted by the Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) last year found that 60% of farms were connected to broadband speeds of less than 2Mbps, while 32% could get speeds of above 2Mbps and 6% were still stuck on outdated dialup links (here).

But the Government has so far rejected most of the criticism and instead suggests that farmers should consider installing a Satellite broadband service, which is indeed now much more affordable. However hardware and setup costs for Satellite could still be prohibitive, especially for smaller farms, and it doesn’t solve the problem of IT skills for those who lack them. Similarly a tiny number of farms may exist in locations where achieving a clear line-of-site to the satellite is not possible.