Rural areas to benefit from high-speed broadband rollout

Millions of people in rural England will get access to the fastest broadband speeds on the market as part of a £5 billion government package.

The government’s Project Gigabit fund to upgrade digital infrastructure in hard-to-reach areas will, according to the government website, "accelerate the country’s recovery from covid, fire up high-growth sectors such as tech and the creative industries, put an end to families battling for bandwidth and bring the speed and reliability people need to start and run businesses." Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly were recently selected to be in the first wave of the Government’s Project Gigabit, which will be tackling the hardest to reach areas as a priority.

New details reveal up to 1,850,000 additional premises across 26 English counties will get access to gigabit speed internet of 1,000 megabits per second - enough to download a HD movie in less than 30 seconds and lay the foundations for next-generation tech such as 8K-quality video streaming.

It brings the current total number of premises in scope for government-funded coverage to 2.2 million, with more still to be announced over the coming months across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

This is in addition to the tens of millions of premises that broadband firms are rapidly connecting through their commercial rollout, from one in ten households in 2019 to more than two in five today. Jurassic Fibre is rolling out full-fibre broadband across Devon, Somerset and Dorset. Michael Maltby, CEO and Founder, Jurassic Fibre, said: “The Government’s latest update on its Project Gigabit programme will come as a welcome relief to many rural areas currently scraping by with substandard broadband. As our digital lives have evolved, a fast and reliable internet connection has become an essential requirement for all. Jurassic Fibre is pushing ahead with its network build which will provide some of the most hard-to-reach locations with ultrafast connectivity. We have already extended our cutting-edge full fibre network to almost 50,000 premises across the South West, with further towns and villages shortly to be announced.”

The government has a target of achieving at least 85 per cent gigabit-capable UK coverage by 2025.