UK People Doubt Government's Ability to Deploy FTTP Broadband by 2033

LONDON, BIOT - Nov. 19, 2018 - PRLog -- A new online survey of 1860 people in the United Kingdom, which was conducted by consumer telecoms information site ISPreview.co.uk, has discovered that the vast majority of respondents (87%) support the Government's aspiration for universal coverage of ultrafast "full fibre" (FTTP) broadband networks by 2033. The catch is that only 43.5% believe it's achievable (38.5% answered "No" and 17.9% said "Maybe").

On top of that 80% said they would support the Government if it needed to invest several billion pounds (GBP) of additional public funding in order to deliver on the 2033 goal, which under the plan would be mostly used to help connect-up disadvantaged rural areas.

Similarly 77% agreed that the current five year business rates (tax) holiday, which makes it cheaper for operators to deploy new fibre optic cables, should be extended beyond its current end date in order to support the 2033 target.

Mark Jackson, ISPreview.co.uk's Editor-in-Chief, said: "The United Kingdom currently only has 'full fibre' coverage of around 4% and this is behind almost every other country in the EU. The Government's proposed plan to correct this is ambitious but it would require a huge ramp-up in civil engineering (i.e. adding around 2 million additional FTTP premises to the national coverage every year for the next 10-15 years)."

"At present the Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review (FTIR) proposals are merely an unfunded aspiration, but they do provide for a good foundation and one that should do a lot to facilitate future deployments. Nevertheless the Government will eventually have to put a big scoop of public funding on the table in order to stand any chance of delivering on their aspiration and until that happens then people are right to be sceptical. But on the whole most of our respondents appeared to support the current direction of travel."

* Online poll conducted with 1860 UK internet connected readers of the https://www.ispreview.co.uk website between 18th September and 8th November 2018.