Will universal superfast broadband be here by 2030?

Over the last decade, we’ve pretty much heard it all from politicians with regard to the rollout of high-speed broadband and its proposed benefits.

There was Jeremy Corbyn’s promise of nationalised free UK-wide broadband, and David Cameron’s pledge that every home and business would have fast broadband by 2020.

Boris Johnson promised everyone in the UK would have full fibre internet by 2025, while the Scottish Government guaranteed superfast broadband to every home in Scotland by 2021.

Since we’re now in 2025, we can definitively say the three latter pledges were merely headline-grabbing soundbites, made despite being quite demonstrably unrealistic.

With a string of broken promises trailing in their wake, the latest political pledge involves universal superfast broadband being available to everyone in the UK by 2030.

Once again, this is far enough in the future to ensure another government will be held accountable if the target is missed.

But could the pledges actually be met this time?

Promises, promises…

Firstly, let’s separate the concept of universal superfast broadband from the reality of the current proposals, which only cover 99 per cent of UK premises.

That conveniently allows the government, Openreach and fibre broadband companies to exclude 300,000 of the UK’s most isolated and hard to reach homes from this scheme.

These are the properties with minimal surrounding infrastructure – the Cornish cottages and Highland bothies which were always going to pose the biggest logistical challenges.

We’ve previously recounted the myriad issues surrounding Scotland’s unrealistic R100 scheme, including missed deadlines, legal challenges and preposterous connection costs.

Last February, residents on Shetland were reportedly quoted £48,000 per property to be connected to high-speed broadband services.

It’s far easier to connect remote homes in Scotland’s mainly urbanised Central Belt than it is in sparsely populated regions where the nearest existing cable might be many miles away.

The term ‘superfast’ is also something of a misnomer.

You might assume universal superfast broadband would place every home in the fast lane of the information superhighway, compatible with 4K streaming and MMORPG gaming.

In fact, superfast is merely defined as download speeds of 30Mbps or above. That’s three times the speed of ADSL lines, but a pale shadow of gigabit connectivity.

You won’t need to perform many activities simultaneously, or have many devices connected to a router, to find connections stuttering and buffering under the weight of data transfers.

Also, superfast broadband is asymmetric, so upload speeds may only be half as fast – not great for anyone using cloud storage, video calling or content creation platforms.

So is universal superfast broadband realistic by 2030?

Setting aside the limitations outlined above, there are grounds to be optimistic that a rollout pledge will actually be met on this occasion.

Research suggests 98 per cent of UK premises already have a superfast network, thanks in part to proactive work by Openreach over the last few years.

It’s been predicted that 99.65 per cent of UK homes will have connection speeds qualifying as superfast – in name, at least – by the end of this decade.

Of course, there’s a difference between having access to high-speed connections and actually taking them up.

There are many reasons why people might stay on ADSL or continue to use an existing satellite broadband service rather than switch to the cables being laid outside their homes.

If the full fibre firm who’ve cabled your street have developed a reputation for overcharging, poor customer service or unreliability, slower connections may still be preferable.

Nonetheless, that’s a choice consumers can make – and it’s one people still unserved by superfast connectivity aren’t able to make themselves.

For these very hard to reach households, a combination of existing or emerging solutions may be required to bring download and upload speeds in line with superfast standards…