Survey Finds Poor Broadband Holding Back Rural Businesses

A new survey of over 4,000 businesses in England, which was conducted by the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE), has claimed that sub-standard infrastructure in rural areas – particularly the lack of quality broadband in many parts – is making it harder for businesses to be “resilient and bounce back from adversity“.

According to Ofcom (here), fixed broadband coverage at speeds of 30Mbps+ currently reaches 96%+ of the UK (28.1m premises), but this falls to 83% in rural areas. Meanwhile, the number of premises that cannot get a “decent broadband” (10Mbps+) service is 0.4% (123,000 premises) and gigabit-capable broadband only reaches 47% – before dropping to 25% in rural areas alone.

Suffice to say, if you live in one of those disadvantaged rural areas then running a business, particularly one that benefits from good internet connectivity, can be much more of a challenge. NICRE’s survey, which was conducted during August 2021, found that 34% of rural enterprises judged their broadband quality to be ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’, which compares to 20% of urban enterprises.

NICRE Co-director Professor, Stephen Roper, said:

“While evidence shows that access to a range of infrastructures and external resources can improve business outcomes and increase the ability of a firm to adapt and bounce back from adversity, little was known about the link between infrastructure and resilience before our survey.

Our significant results indicating a positive relationship between broadband quality and firm resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic are particularly important to the Levelling Up agenda, when viewed alongside the issues with access to, and quality of, broadband in rural areas.

Together they present a strong case for policy intervention to overcome the barriers preventing comprehensive high-quality broadband in rural areas, given its presence is likely to enhance resilience and, in turn, productivity growth of rural firms.

While our findings demonstrate clear differences in experiences between rural and urban firms, this is not the full picture. Considering variations within rural areas is as important as rural and urban comparisons in understanding the experiences of rural enterprises to develop policies that will truly Level Up Britain.”

The Government will no doubt highlight that their £5bn Project Gigabit rollout aims to ensure that a minimum of 85%+ of UK premises can access a gigabit-capable broadband ISP connection by the end of 2025, before possibly reaching “nationwide” (c.99%) coverage by the end of 2030 (here and here). But for many rural areas, such upgrades could still be years away.

In addition, there’s the industry-led £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) project, which aims to extend geographic 4G mobile coverage to 95% of the UK by the end of 2025 (it may also help the 5G rollout). The scheme essentially involves both the reciprocal sharing of existing masts in certain areas and the demand-led building and sharing of new masts in others between the operators.

The Government are currently also exploring what more they could do for those in the final 0.3% of very hard to reach premises, which we suspect may end up involving some degree of fixed wireless or satellite solutions (e.g. a subsidy for Starlink).