April 2023 BT Progress Update on 10Mbps UK Broadband USO

UK ISP BT has published their latest biannual (April 2023) update on the progress they’ve made in delivering the 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband, which reveals that they’ve so far built a USO connection to over 7,000 premises (up from 5,900 in Oct 2022), with 800 further builds in progress (down from 2,000).

The obligation, which was introduced in March 2022, is aimed at those who can’t yet receive a 10Mbps or faster download speed and aren’t planned to get one in the next 12-months. Ofcom states that 79,506 UK premises currently fall into this gap (i.e. those outside of suitable fixed line, fixed wireless and 4G mobile coverage), or c. 500,000 premises if you exclude wireless solutions (here), but some homes are still too expensive for the USO.

Back in 2020 we reported on various examples (here), where people had been hit with quotes for excess costs that ran from tens of thousands of pounds and all the way up to £1-2m. Since then, some improvements have been made to the USO and its cost model (here), but there’s no escaping the reality that some properties will not be economically viable to reach via even this approach.

The government are currently exploring how to reach those who live in such “Very Hard to Reach” areas (here) – roughly equating to the final c.0.3% of premises, such as via BT’s new rural broadband trial with OneWeb’s global network of ultrafast LEO satellites (here). Not to mention several separate trials with Starlink’s (SpaceX) standalone LEO constellation (here).

In the meantime, the USO gap is naturally continuing to shrink, which is thanks to the expansion of rural 4G / 5G coverage, the impact of the government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme (e.g. funding to help build gigabit broadband in rural areas) and commercial deployments of similar upgrades. Ofcom currently predicts that the number of premises unable to get 10Mbps (decent) broadband could fall to 52,300 by March 2025.

The April 2023 USO Report

Overall, by the end of March 2023, BT had built a USO connection to over 7,000 premises, with 800 further builds in progress. The number of planned USO builds has fallen sharply from 2,000 six months ago and the number of USO requests has also continued to fall, but after checking, some of these requests are often found to be ineligible for the obligation (i.e. usually because a suitable USO option already exists) – details below.

As for confirmed orders, there were just 11 in March and BT has generally been delivering these within up to 12-18 months (Ofcom allows up to 24 months for total build completion). But the latest report doesn’t say very much and is largely just a broad statistical update on the USO’s progress. Overall, the USO remains a bit of a disappointment, which often isn’t able to deliver on its “universal” namesake.