Are you Very Hard to Reach? The UK Space Agency is here to help
The UK Government is attempting to resolve broadband issues affecting Very Hard to Reach households.
If you live in a densely populated urban environment, broadband may be something you take for granted.
Then again, if you live in a densely populated urban environment, you probably take mains sewage and gas supplies for granted as well.
In sparsely populated areas, things are less assured.
This can often be an off-grid hinterland of wood-burning stoves and well-based water sources, where septic tanks and diesel generators provide domestic alternatives to absent infrastructure.
An isolated cottage half a mile from its nearest neighbour doesn’t justify the economics of mains services being piped to it, unless it stands along a route to larger conurbations.
Similar sentiments apply to internet access. It’s economically unviable to expect a fibre cable company to pipe services to every isolated bothy and island bungalow.
Meanwhile, Openreach (the BT offshoot responsible for our national telecommunications infrastructure) has innumerable other installations and upgrades to handle on a finite budget.
A world passing you by
Without dependable internet coverage, people can’t work remotely, participate in online banking, enjoy streaming media and online gaming or rely on smart home technology.
The UK Government has tacitly acknowledged these challenges for some time, but now a new scheme is proposing innovative hybrid solutions to limited internet connectivity.
A £3.5 million programme jointly run by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the UK Space Agency will target remote rural areas which are officially designated as Very Hard to Reach.
These are likely to lie outside the scope of Project Gigabit – a separate £5 billion programme aimed at giving 99 per cent of UK homes full fibre broadband.
At present, 85 per cent of homes can access gigabit-capable broadband services, but it’ll become progressively more difficult to reach the remaining unconnected dwellings.
The Very Hard to Reach programme has commenced with a callout for satellite services, though not of the static dish-driven form we’ve previously written about.
In one proposed trial, low-Earth or geostationary orbit satellites will communicate with vehicle-mounted terminals which could be used by councils, farmers and the emergency services.
It’s been suggested that hybrid networks might be required to reliably serve the most isolated regions, using a blend of satellite, fixed wireless and mobile cellular services.
The Very Hard to Reach programme therefore also features a brace of projects testing hybrid satellite and mobile networks.
Satellite broadband can be beamed down to any location regardless of topography, while 5G/6G networks potentially offer blistering data transfer speeds.
A combination of the two could be transformative, if they can be reliably paired.
Is any of this going to make a difference?
It’s been noted that other trial schemes have been tested across the UK’s fringes before, without heralding any notable infrastructure improvements.
One of the geographic areas featuring in the Very Hard to Reach scheme – Papa Stour in Shetland – has previously been the subject of another satellite broadband trial.
Rural residents would be forgiven for approaching this latest scheme with a degree of cynicism, however well-intentioned it may be.
In the meantime, the Government is encouraging providers to register expressions of interest by the end of January, with a public announcement expected after Easter.
It’s going to be some time before the residents of remote islands and isolated dwellings have anything more tangible in prospect than broadband trials and connectivity tribulations.
However, if a dependable hybrid solution to internet connectivity is developed, it could be rapidly rolled out to bring stable high-speed internet to every corner of the land.
