Northern Ireland Council Calls on Banks to Help Improve Broadband

The Fermanagh and Omagh District Council has written to First Trust Bank, Ulster Bank and Danske Bank in the hope of encouraging them to help invest in improvements to local broadband connectivity. Recently online banking has become much more important due to the closure of local branches.

People who live in rural areas will no doubt be all too familiar with the issue of vanishing banks, post offices and so forth. Many such closures often end up being targeted for areas where the availability of “superfast broadband” is similarly considered to be weak or even non-existent, which is a tricky problem because the very use of internet banking is what has also helped to make traditional branches less sustainable (i.e. a lot of what we all once did in-branch can now be done online).

As the council’s letter states (Impartial Reporter): “There is a real need for improvements to broadband coverage in the rural areas and members believe that given the pursuance of banks’ to promote increased online banking, the institutions could possibly assist with this matter.” Naturally the banks have a different interpretation and state that broadband is a matter for the government.

Ian Jordan, Non-Executive Chairman of the N.I Committee of UK Finance, said:

“But, technology is not for everyone, which is why all the major banks have partnered with the Post Office to help consumers and businesses do basic banking at over 11,000 Post Office branches across the UK, many of which are open outside of normal branch banking hours.

I can assure you that we are fully cognisant of the issue which you raise and that our initiative with The Post Office is designed to address the needs.”

Technically speaking it could perhaps be argued that some banks are already lending significant chunks of money to broadband operators (in the same way as they do for any other commercial businesses), as well as various related investment funds, and are thus already investing in the betterment of national broadband connectivity. Admittedly this isn’t quite the same as handing a big chunk of cash to local authorities.

The other counter argument here is that you don’t strictly need a superfast connection in order to conduct online banking (banking sites should work fine with 1-2Mbps). Plus a far bigger concern is likely to come from elderly and certain disabled users, many of which prefer to talk with a human than fiddle with unfamiliar internet connectivity (the issue of better broadband for them may be a moot point).

Actually most of us like the option of talking with a human, not only pensioners, although increasingly to get this from your bank means having to travel a fair bit further (e.g. into a larger town). Whether or not we should be expecting banks to cover at least some of the costs for new core infrastructure is at the very least an interesting debate, albeit probably not one that’s likely to make much practical headway.

Meanwhile the £1.6bn+ Broadband Delivery UK programme predicts that the coverage of fixed superfast broadband (24Mbps+) networks, which currently sits at an estimated 95%+ of UK premises, could reach 98% by 2020 and there’s a future 10Mbps+ USO for tackling the final 2% (enforced from 2020).

However, Northern Ireland’s national coverage of 24Mbps+ capable connectivity is currently closer to 86-88%, which places it well below Scotland, Wales and England. In the meantime a good place to start might be for the government of Northern Ireland to resolve its political differences and get on with the job of actually governing (easier said than done).