Boris’s Gigabit Broadband for All UK by 2025 Aim Faces Inquiry
A cross-party group of MPs (select committee) has today launched a new inquiry, which will examine how “realistic” the Government’s challenging “ambition” is for ensuring that every home and business in the United Kingdom can access a “gigabit-capable broadband” service by 2025. It will also look at the role of 5G mobile.
At present a little over 14% of the UK (around 4.3 million premises) can access a 1000Mbps+ (1Gbps) capable fixed broadband ISP network (here), which drops to around 12.5% if only looking at “full fibre” (FTTP) networks (3.7m). Nearly all of this gigabit coverage is currently coming from FTTP deployments via operators like Openreach (BT), Hyperoptic, Gigaclear, Cityfibre, Community Fibre, G.Network, TrueSpeed, OFNL and many others.
However Virgin Media’s on-going upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 technology will mean that all 15 million of the premises covered by their existing Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) and new FTTP network will also be able to order 1Gbps speeds by the end of 2021, which should significantly boost the gigabit coverage target, even if only in dense urban areas.
Suffice to say to say that by the end of 2025 it wouldn’t be a massive surprise if the industry alone, mostly using private investment, had already been able to achieve gigabit coverage of around 60-70% (educated guess). But the as yet unknown quantity in all this is the future impact of the Government’s proposed £5bn plan to help those in the hardest to reach final 20% of UK premises (mostly rural) gain access to 1Gbps speeds (here).
Julian Knight MP, DCMS Committee Chair, said:
“The delivery of full-fibre broadband is critical to the success of the UK, particularly the need to ensure that our businesses of the future are equipped with a reliable, future-proofed network no matter where they are based.
The Government has said it wants to achieve this nationwide roll-out by 2025. We’ll be carrying out a reality check to find out what steps must be taken now if this target is to be reached.”
The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has hinted that the Government will be open to using a wider array of technologies than just full fibre for delivering on this target (e.g. fixed wireless access, HFC and 5G based mobile broadband), but even then it will still be extremely difficult to achieve 100% coverage of such connectivity by the end of 2025.
Various challenges remain, not least with respect to general concerns over a shortage of skilled engineers, the need for business rates relief on new fibre to be significantly extended (it’s only 5 years and that started in 2017, although Scotland has gone to 10 years), making wayleaves easier and the viability of using 5G for gigabit speeds in rural areas (it can work in an urban setting, but rural areas focus on wide coverage using lower frequency bands = bad for speeds).
The level of involvement that full fibre networks will now play has also become unclear. The previous administration targeted universal full fibre coverage by 2033, but we no longer know if that will ever be achieved. Finally, there are also questions over whether there will be enough time for build, since the framework won’t be ready until late 2021 (here).
One challenge that the inquiry will face is that they’re asking the key questions before DCMS itself has had a chance to set out a final framework for the policy and thus how to properly answer those questions. Evidence can be submitted to the inquiry until 2nd April 2020.
DCMS Inquiry – Terms of Reference
* How realistic is the Government’s ambition of nationwide gigabit-capable broadband by 2025, and what measures (regulatory, financial, technical, other) will be needed to achieve it?
* What are the challenges to the roll-out of 5G and gigabit-capable networks? To what extent do existing legislative, regulatory and spending plans address them?
* What needs to happen to ensure the Government’s ‘outside in’ approach successfully addresses the digital divide while also delivering value for money?
* What does take-up of broadband and mobile services indicate about consumer and business attitudes to digital connectivity? What needs to be learnt from this for the roll-out of, and switchover to, gigabit-capable networks?
* What will be the impact on individuals and communities whose broadband and mobile connectivity fails to keep pace with the rest of the country over the next 10 years? What is the link with other DCMS policy concerns, such as changing patterns in the consumption of digital media?
* How effectively do the different stakeholders (UK and devolved governments, local authorities, Ofcom, industry) work together in both the mobile and broadband sectors? How might these relationships be improved to support gigabit-capable roll-out?
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 Linkedin.
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What a waste of time!
Yes it’s ambitious, but it’s got VM, OR etc moving on getting it done.
It should of been started many years ago though. But I am glad it is now starting to happen.
This select committee is probably filled with Labour/LibDem MP’s who want to show up the government. Or even some Conservative MP’s who don’t like Boris.
given he has broken most of his election promises already it doesnt matter who brought the enquiry.. questions need to be asked.
not to mention if there isnt enough money for the NHS how the hell would there be money for this?
@JamesW. Inquiries like this are fairly normal and should be welcomed as a useful, if not always effective, way of getting the Government to respond to the challenges they may face in delivery of new policy/targets.
In terms of who sits on the committee, there are a total of 11 members; 6 are conservative, while 4 are Labour and 1 is SNP. No Liberal Democrats.
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/378/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/membership/
@JamesW Full fibre rollout WAS started many years ago.
And then cancelled. By Margaret Thatcher.
The dual impact of business rates on fibre and manpower challenges due to immigration issues are making the 2025 target very difficult for the industry. Let’s hope that this inquiry at least leads to a clear announcement from the government for an extension to the current relief from business rates beyond 2022.
It is an opportunity for many of the sensible things that have been said on here to be put to the select committee.
A proper discussion about upload speed.
Overbuild priorities
Role, if any, of VMS HFC network – is there a minimum upgrade of active cabs to the edge of the network with full fibre and power so that symmetrical is possible when D4 becomes a thing (which ok it isn’t right now but it wil be). Or is HFC a medium term rabbit hole?
Personally I would just keep tipping money into the voucher schemes, which are working fine now and give rates holidays for fibre that is built for social needs ie to non commercial areas. Although I would allow asymmetric products to be used for any vouchers.
There is a lot of good work going on. And nobody is saying that they need a load of interference to make this work.
The biggest threat to the rollout is the withdrawal of “unskilled” labour by HMG as you hardworking digger driver or the bloke putting the duct in is probably an “unskilled” Eastern European. I put the unskilled in sneer quotes as you either have the Eastern European person in the digger cab or an empty seat ATM as there is a shortage of machine operators……
More lies spread by remoaners, if employers need workers they can import them with work permits.
I have a nagging feeling that my neighboors and I will not fit into the commercially viable or most difficult to reach models. Along with 10-20% of the population. We will then become “the most difficult to reach” by default and the money will have all dried up!
Exactly, same here for myself where I live.
I agree. I’d prefer priority to be given to those that can’t get a superfast connection, but that will never happen (for the same reasons we don’t have superfast already).
A few areas around me that I would consider commercially “Not viable” have been upgraded to FTTP. So it is happening but at a slower rate.
However, two of these areas (Chislet & Woodchurch, Manston) already has access to Superfast speeds already so unsure on the thought process to upgrading these areas to FTTP (yet in Chislet, those further from the cabinets have been left with slower speeds with no plans to upgrade them to FTTP, very bizarre) – as these are rural villages, perhaps it’s part of a trial to gain insight.
There will be mixed commercial drivers.
Development being done with FTTP so bauckhwul and AGnode coste taken care so the rest makes sense; or
Could also be End of Life on a row of phone poles and you get to the point where OR is rightly asking itself do I replace the rotten phone poles or do I bury a fibre; or
A particular series of copper circuits may be getting very high maintenance; or
The circuits you refer to could be the last copper circuits on some long back haul that OR want to retire; or
It could also be that there are a large number of premises that don’t meet USO so they are on the map to their with EO’s for opportunistic infill; or
it could be something that had been planned years ago and has now been dusted off as a critical piece of the jigsaw suddenly became cheaper?
Could be any mixture of the above and and could also just be part of a wider plan that has not been shared.
Be sure it will be commercially driven.
We also do not have Superfast 24Mbs due to being placed on the wrong DSLAM by the council.
A cheap Lift and Shift by Openreach would solve this issue for us and our neighbours, but no we don’t do that say OR.
And no we don’t want to shell out loads of money to get FTTP, just want reasonable speeds like our lucky other neighbours on the correct DSLAM, Superfast 30Mbs and beyond, paying the same price as we are.
We are subsidising others.
Its not like we are in the sticks, we are in a town of 8000 people.
They should legislate so that providers can only over-build in an area if they also deploy where there’s currently no speed capable provision.
We keep hearing about new deployment areas… most of which are already supplied by x number of other suppliers.
At the moment there seems to be a lot of cherry picking which one would expect without a national framework.
A form of regulation much like the market bands applied to exchanges… so they could only deploy in a market B area if they a meeting a ratio set between market A and B.
All too premature. All we have currently is some access legislation, a £5bn promise plus £600m to stimulate Fibre to 2021. The DCMS and Ofcom have responded with some strategic priories but there is no real detail, the National Infrastructure Strategy mob are supposed to be providing a paper to support the budget which we still await.
What we actually need is a coherent Government plan detailing how the £5b will be spent, long term policies regarding business rates etc and DCMS/Ofcom to confirm their policies 5 or 10 years out including milestones for USO, coverage obligations, geographical monopolies etc. Once we have that then perhaps there is something worth scrutinising.
Julian Knight’s statement says Full Fibre so that shows how out of touch he is. Neither Fibre or a target was mentioned in the Queen’s speech only “speed up the delivery of gigabit capable broadband”.
Ratio of upload to download speed needs to be taken into account. A 1 Gig service with a slow upload speed (like Virgin) will just mean in a few years to come we will be going through all the same thing about upgrading broadband just that next time it will be for upload speeds. People in certain towns and cities will be complaining about poor speeds because they have rubbish upload speeds and wonder way all this rhetoric we have now about 1 Gig and promises to upgrade the nation mean they have a much slower service then other areas.
We need to be more ambitious and go for symmetrical connections rather than one foot in the past where the technology meant upload is a fraction of the download speed. At least with fibre even if not symmetrical now (on GPON) is easily upgraded to be and is therefore future proof.
Copper connections need to be replaced with fibre and every home should have a fibre connection like they have a telephone line now. We can get electricity to every home and we can get a telephone service to every home, so it is achievable.
Not every home in the country has mains electricity and more are without mains water or gas. The same will apply to telephony despite over 100 years of USO.
Governments have subsidised infrastructure in the past and still do (to new build areas) so that it is why we need a clear statement regarding the minimum expected services of living in a dwelling and the level of subsidy they cover (time phased). It can be done but are those in towns and cities willing to pay levy’s or taxes to pay for it?
The target therefore will remain Giga capable for those that wish to opt for it and a progressively increasing USO within a cost cap. GPON is asynchronous in design but network providers are intending provide synchronous products for those that wish to pay for that need. Going forward consumers will consume far more than upload therefore those that require more upload capacity can select the higher products that meet that requirement. We may also see the introduction of “burst” products that allow faster speeds for short periods for a given task.
“Not every home in the country has mains electricity and more are without mains water or gas. The same will apply to telephony despite over 100 years of USO.”
The number of homes without mains water or electricity or phone are percentage wise very tiny, and if you haven’t electricity or mains water you are hardly going to be surprised when you haven’t broadband. So lets be less pedantic on here and more grown up.
The aim should be fibre to every home, it is the only future proof way of supplying data and infinitely upgradeable without needing huge infrastructure projects to start all over again.
If the government can find hundreds of billions of pounds for HS2 that few will actually benefit from, and the people that benefit are already in well served cities (as that is where the stations will be), then the money ‘could’ be found for fibre to every home.
GPON is asynchronous by design but future versions are not. My point is fibre can be upgraded to support speeds of the future but if copper is still in the infrastructure it means we end up with a large percentage of households still stuck on slow copper and still not providing a level playing field.
I agree FTTP is the ultimate goal but not within these timelines (resource and cost). Yes all new fixed network should be Full Fibre but look at how the Government/Ofcom delayed, and still delays, on New Build and BDUK is still progressing with FTTC.
The task has to be a decent broadband for all. My view of that is 40/20Mbps now (a long way from that), 200/50Mbps by 2025.
Yes Symmetrical via GPON is possible (doesn’t change the basic concept of broadcast) and providers are proposing to do that but to get faster upload speeds and symmetrical you can’t support a 1:32 ratio from the OLT. So providers must be assuming a mix of usage/users and that they will not be overloaded and only a few businesses. Business areas can have lower ratios. People criticise OR and VM sticking with asynchronous products but actually that’s what majority of customers need, keeps costs reasonable and ensures less abuse. If people really need sustained 900Mbps up then I would say they really should not be on GPON.
I can only assume providers such as Cityfibre are just hoping that it will be alright on the night and usage never exceeds their feed and ratios. We will see.
“Not every home in the country has mains electricity and more are without mains water or gas”
The difference between these utilities and broadband is that it is possible to implement a stand-alone solution for these – a well for water, LPG or oil instead of mains gas, solar panels or a generator for electricity, septic tank or sewage treatment plant for waste water.
I have brilliant WiFi coverage – limited use without a connection to the internet though.
I understand that and agree, my point is that the Government has always placed a cost cap on the provision of services we in would now assume to be basic utilities and this is happening with broadband. The proposed USO performance and its subsidy should be higher. In addition it should be a genuine commitment not a fudge where the provider (in our case BT/OR) claims retrospectively and cost basis is still unclear at this late stage. The next thing will be that our electricity supply is insufficient to charge our electric cars by 2030.
The Government and its agents need to be honest.
Phil
I concur. People should not accept endless mediocrity nor focus on pedantics. The bottom line is that Britain and the British consumer have been left in the lurch by terrible planning, inept execution and a useless regulator and absence of political will/laws to get futuristic infrastructure built.
There should be a law making it compulsory for all telephone/internet lines to be FIBRE and NO COPPER allowed by let’s say 2023. That way, every single house has to be fibre ready. At that point, it’s not a case of IF Openreach/whoever will rollout fibre – they HAVE to.
And the speeds they should aim for are indeed at least Gigabit capable, with a minimum product of 330. The backhaul infrastructure should be future proofed to allow for 10,000 and beyond. In Singapore, you can get 1000Mbps for about £25 a month, or 10,000Mbps for £90. The article earlier this week showed an OECD report and Japan and South Korea, Lithuania and Estonia etc are FAR AHEAD of us.
If the regulator had any spine and principles they would have long ago:
1. Split off Openreach from BT in totality to avoid any conflict of interests
2. Made it illegal to call FTTC a Fibre product
3. Regulated pricing to ban those areas that can only get 1-3Mbps being charged a price for a 30Mbps product
4. Issued fines to ISPs for making customers wait let’s say over 30 minutes on the phone and especially when the issue is not resolved during the phone call – e.g. A fine of £50,000 per customer
5. Issued fines for overcharges to a customer which are not the customer’s fault and owing to incompetence on the part of the ISP/mobile provider – e.g. A fine of £100,000 per incident
6. Issued fines for customers getting charged for scam texts, telephone subscriptions etc owing to not being automatically “Opted in” to debit bars etc. E.g. A fine of £100,000 per incident
If the regulator actually did its job, then the crooked ISPs, train companies etc would actually not be able to get away with stuff. Railways for instance – if they fined a train company £100,000 every time an individual train is more than 10 minutes late, you would suddenly see a massive drop in late trains.
I concur. We need to be far more ambitious Phil and build infrastructure that is for the future.
All copper lines should be made fully fibre. Like you said, nearly all homes in this country are given electricity lines, or water supply. If it’s compulsory by LAW that all copper telephone connections have to be Fibre, then companies HAVE to upgrade everyone.
It is wrong for people to try and suppress speed potentials saying “people don’t need it.” Who are they to dictate what people need, or might use? The infrastructure should be there and future proofed so that any ISP can offer any service on a national network.
They should prioritise all lines who have subpar ADSL/VDSL speeds. And they should build the FTTP network to be symmetrical just like the CityFibre lines. Places like Japan, South Korea, Estonia, Lithuania, Singapore are lightyears ahead of us in their rollouts.
Right now, they have stalled to deliver FTTP, with perhaps only the threat of competitors/nationalisation forcing Openreach into action. BT/BT Wholesale also seem to have a vested interest/conflict of interests in opening the network up. We’re getting overbuild in some places, only 1 FTTP provider (non symmetrical) with high prices in others and zero FTTP in most. The whole thing is a pig’s breakfast.
Should legislate to ban copper. Legislate for symmetrical by 2025 or risk fines. Legislate for subsidies to deliver FTTP to rural areas first. Legislate to ensure a level playing field to access a national Fibre network.
And definitely make laws to ensure that only FTTP can be called Fibre, minimum speed is 330Mbps today and 1000Mbps in 2025.
Yes usual story, set targets for the big players. A few months later – water it down again. They will continue to upgrade the low hanging fruit and pretend the non-commercial areas don’t exist (“but they have 4G so we’re allowed to do nothing!”)
It would be nice to see some more players in the game, allow alt-nets to move in to more areas and pick up the slack. It’s amazing how nimble large companies can suddenly become when the race is no longer rigged in their favour.
If they genuinely wanted to improve the overall statistics for the UK, concentrating on the < 10mb copper connections and shifting them to FTTP would make the biggest difference. Otherwise they will always drag the stats down. You can only rely on Ofcom goofing the figures for you internally up to a point. All the actual speedtest data gathered by google and Ookla will continue to make the UK look like a joke.
My dream is to see existing sub 10Mb fixed lines made illegal and levy fines on OR until they are upgraded – that will make them commercially viable fast.
More players tend to amalgamate as per cable TV. And how many are there?
“It would be nice to see some more players in the game, allow alt-nets to move in to more areas and pick up the slack.”
Alt-nets have been free to do this for years, why do you believe that they can’t?
Altnets aren’t the answer – none of them have the capacity to make a significant contribution. It needs companies of the size of BT or VM or CityFibre to cover the millions of properties (e.g. BT build more FTTP connections a week than Gigaclear manage in a year).
One but cable TV doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it’s in competition with freeview, freesat, sky, streaming services etc and between them they cover the entire UK. Survival of the fittest is how competition works, and the transition usually benefits the customers.
How many 4G mobile companies are there and how does competiton affect pricing and coverage for customers there? It improves both, a far closer analagy to Broadband then cable TV.
If the UK does achieve 60-70% coverage by 2025 then perhaps 2033 for all would be a more realistic target, still I don’t think it will be 100%. But it all depends how much coverage is achieved by 2025.
The biggest hamper will be wayleave agreement. Now for those still on EO Line (and I was one of the last few upgraded in October 2019). I’m pretty certain I will not get FTTP from Openreach in the next 5 years. Openreach will want to make their investment worthwhile for the cabinet and copper re-arrangements. I think Openreach will target FTTP first for those that don’t have FTTC or those having the worst affected speeds under FTTC.
Setting bold targets is unrealistic. What will be more helpful is if the government can try to address practical issues that are hampering the roll-out of FTTP. Addressing bureaucracy and red tape will be a start. Working with housing associations, councils and private building owners to educated them about the importance of FTTP.
Companies like Openreach should also start sending out letters to landlords, tenants and local management teams to convince them of expressing interest in Full Fibre demonstrating advantages over FTTC services and even physically meeting those relevant authorities. In my case Openreach quickly gave up after the wayleave was denied and all that changed was plan from FTTP reverted to FTTC.
Until we stop viewing FTTP as a needless luxury and regard FTTC as Fibre, big sizeable targets will not be achieved in a short few years.
The government say they are talking to the supermarkets about making food available for those self isolating at home for fear of getting a virus. The supermarkets say they haven’t been spoken to. This is just the latest in an exhaustingly long line of lines. When a liar lies 95% of the time, why would you ever trust him?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51769184
He got Brexit done so can do no wrong in the eyes of 52% of the population.