To achieve full fibre broadband ‘for all’ it is expected that current issues must be resolved in the next 12 months to actually achieve the high-speed internet goal by 2025. However, one expert has said that not all aspects of problems will be fixed in that time frame. Although previously, Johnson commented the former target of 2033 was ‘laughably unambitious’.
The letter sent to 10 Downing Street lists four policies that the industry says require urgent attention:
- The industry wants ministers to force landlords to provide access to land and buildings if a tenant has requested a full-fibre or other connection be installed
- Fibre broadband has business rates incorporated into its costs, however the industry is claiming that this discourages the investment of it and should be reconsidered.
- Newly built homes must incorporate the necessary provisions to accommodate fibre broadband.
- If Brexit results in less working labourers, less installs will be able to be carried out for all the work that would be involved. Installing these connections would cause a lot of disruption, costs and work.
Amongst the big name providers such as BT and Virgin Media, other members include Openreach, Sky, Google, Vodafone as well as many others. Openreach welcomed the idea but said “Upgrading the entire UK network is a major civil engineering challenge.”
A DCMS spokesman said “The government is committed to creating the right opportunities for investment and speeding up the rollout of the required digital infrastructure.” But he advised he wouldn’t comment on the four demands in order to complete the works…
On top of all this, Virgin Media has pledged by the end of 2021 millions of homes will acquire internet download speeds of 1Gbps at least. To put this into perspective, this is about half of all UK households and double the fastest speeds Virgin already markets. Although they have claimed to do this themselves, the company described Boris Johnson’s pledge as ‘very stretching’.
