UK Government Consults on Business Access to Superfast Broadband

As first promised in February 2016, the Government’s culture (DCMS) and business (BIS) departments have today jointly opened a new consultation, which seeks to understand “what barriers businesses are facing in accessing superfast broadband.”

The Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, confirmed that he planned to investigate this issue as part of a speech to the EEF trade association earlier this year (here). Prior to that the EEF had complained that too many small businesses were allegedly paying “inflated” costs of more than £5,000 a year for Internet connectivity.

In keeping with this the new review has promised to examine what broadband speeds businesses need (now and in the future), the barriers that exist for businesses to get affordable / high speed broadband and the issue of leased lines and the role they play in the market.

Executive Summary

In an increasingly digital world, broadband has the power to transform the way in which businesses reach their target markets and interact with their consumers over time. It is therefore vital that the UK is able to keep pace with that technological change on a national and local level to support SME growth and harness that potential.

Ofcom’s analysis of future deployment plans also finds that by 2017, when 95% of all UK premises will have superfast broadband, 18% (270,000) of the 1.3m SMEs with at least 1 employee will not have access to superfast broadband. Whilst these figures do not include those SMEs using dedicated leased lines, this represents a significant number of businesses and demonstrates the importance and timeliness of this Review.

The consultation, which will be open for responses until 3rd June 2016, falls shortly after Ofcom concluded its most recent Business Connectivity Market Review 2016 (here and here) that investigated many of the same areas and proposed some big changes (greater access to BT’s Dark Fibre). Not to mention the regulator’s Strategic Review proposals. In that sense the timing of the Government’s review could perhaps be viewed as a little problematic.

The Government will also need to recognise that different businesses need different levels of connectivity and domestic grade broadband connections simply won’t cut it for everybody. On the other hand the reverse can also be true, with many smaller businesses having no need for leased line style connectivity.