BBC study shows broadband divide

Roughly three million households in the UK have broadband speeds of less than 2Mbits/sec, according to new research commission by the BBC.

Dubbed ‘notspots', these areas are surprisingly not limited to rural communities, and include suburban areas and even some streets in major towns.

Often the issue is how far many homes are situated from their local exchanges. According to the BBC, the study from broadband search site Samknows showed that in Basingstoke 50 per cent of telephone lines are more than 6km from the exchange. In Hampshire as a whole a quarter of postcodes get less than 1Mbits/sec.

Andrew Ferguson of Thinkbroadband said: “A common assumption is that we are talking of rural properties, miles from anywhere, but the reality is that hardly any town of 25,000 or less population is going to benefit from the existing plans.”

This could give the Government a real headache trying to provide a promised Universal Service Obligation (USO) outlined in the interim Digital Britain report.

If implemented, a USO would ensure that all UK households could get at least a 2Mbits/sec broadband service. But the research for the BBC undertaken by Samknows has given a far clearer picture of the problems that lie ahead in implementing a USO and next-generation broadband.

The BBC study was undertaken after Samknows completed a project with the Community Broadband Network. The site compared a sample of UK postcode data against estimated line length.

This is a major factor in ADSL services because the line speed degrades the further away the home is from the local exchange. Samknows also used data taken from real-world testing of internet service providers' services.

The study found that although urban areas will get the faster speeds, it was not only remote or rural areas that were losing out.