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NFU Survey Finds UK Farmers Still Suffering Poor Mobile and Broadband

Thursday, Jul 20th, 2017 (10:34 am) - Score 755

A new survey conducted by the National Farmers Union with 800 farmers across the United Kingdom has found that just 6% have access to “superfast” broadband download speeds and 85% have an “unreliable” outdoor mobile phone signal.

The news that farmers, which tend to operate in some of the country’s most sparse and remote rural areas, suffer from slow broadband and weak mobile signals shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Most of the major Mobile Network Operators (MNO) still have fairly poor levels of geographic coverage, especially in the newer 4G bands (although EE have delivered over 80% coverage).

Guy Smith, NFU Vice President, said:

“More than ever farmers need to use digital technologies to help farm more efficiently and fully utilise emerging digital technology such as robotics and GPS. Yet no signal for mobile phone voice or text and a severe lack of broadband coverage is creating a real barrier for those farm businesses and putting them at a disadvantage.

The ever-growing digital divide between urban and rural workplaces needs to be bridged. Government should recognise that, internationally, the UK is trailing behind other countries, putting our farmers at a competitive disadvantage. That’s why we are calling on government to adopt a much more ambitious approach to finding ways to get fast broadband to those areas that need it most.

This will mean ensuring there is necessary regulation in place and a competitive rural market. It is also essential to lay the foundations for an effective 5G network – universal coverage, with safe, fast and efficient systems that farmers can access to provide food and rural based services for domestic and international markets, while maintaining the countryside we all cherish, work in and visit.”

In fairness, the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme has so far helped fixed line “superfast broadband” networks to reach around 92-93% of premises, although that still leaves 7-8% (i.e. mostly rural areas where farmers are likely to operate). The good news is that BDUK expects to reach around 97% by 2020 and hopefully the proposed 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO) might then benefit the rest, although some will still be left with inferior Satellite as the only option.

As for Mobile coverage, the NFU’s study puts a lot of stock into the future benefits (hype) of 5G but this is potentially a bit wrong-headed and farmers might do better to focus on 4G instead. The 5G roll-out won’t even begin until late 2020 and it will then take a few years before it really starts to reach rural areas.

Better rural coverage also tends to be achieved via lower frequency radio spectrum and in those bands the difference between 4G and 5G won’t be nearly as significant as in urban areas, where short-range higher frequencies can deliver ultrafast speeds. In that sense EE’s effort to extend the geographic reach of their 4G network to 95% by the end of December 2020 is a lot more important for the farming community.

One other issue with the NFU’s survey is that it only appears to measure responses based on existing service use and doesn’t consider whether or not any of the respondents are also covered by potentially faster networks, which they could benefit from via an upgrade. Admittedly faster networks often haven’t reached such areas but it would be good to match up the results with network availability just to see.

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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