New research from Point Topic has revealed that the UK Digital Divide between rural and urban areas is continuing to grow, especially when it comes to the quality and performance of broadband ISP services. The study suggests that "radical action" will need to be taken if rural towns and villages are to avoid being left behind in the slow lane.

Point Topic reached its conclusion by using their database of UK broadband geography to calculate the percentage coverage of six different measures of broadband infrastructure.

The Six Measures of Broadband Infrastructure Quality / Availability
1. Local-loop unbundling ( LLU ) service availability.
2. BT telephone exchanges enabled for its 21st Century Network (21CN).
3. Access to the Virgin Media cable network.
4. Broadband ISP services of at least 2Mbps downstream.
5. Next Generation Access (NGA) super-fast broadband services as of end-2010.
6. Projected NGA services for end-2015.

Sadly Point Topic's measure of broadband infrastructure coverage found that urban areas of Britain scored 67% as of mid-2010, yet rural areas only managed a meagre 25%. This is best illustrated with the aid of a graph.


The study predicts that the gap between rural and urban areas will increase over the coming years, effectively doubling every 2 years. This should not come as much of a surprise, with Private Sector Investment naturally bringing the new generation of "super-fast" broadband solutions to the most economically viable urban areas first.

However, deploying such speeds to rural areas is an entirely different kettle of fish. Point Topic warns that ISPs face many obstacles. Similarly, the governments £830m pot of cash, which is expected to last until 2017, may now not be enough to do the job.


If our current survey is anything to go by then most people would appear to agree that the government's plan to make a minimum broadband download speed of 2Mbps available to everybody by 2015 is simply not adequate enough.

However, delivering super-fast speeds to rural areas doesn't need to be expensive. Fibrestream and others have already proven that it can be done with very little tax payers' money (sometimes none at all).

Fostering a fairer system of Fibre Taxation would be the only way to make such an approach more viable on a national scale, which the government appears reluctant to entertain.