Broadband is a utility – not having it stops children doing homework, farmers filling in essential forms and families keeping up with the cultural life of the nation, from Strictly to Netflix’s most obscure arthouse download.
Poor connections hold people back from seeing their doctors online and add strain to the NHS. They stop shoppers saving money online, they lower house prices and in the not too distant future they will prevent the widespread use of driverless cars, drones and even the most casual use of new technology.
There is no infrastructure project that government is involved with that is more important than broadband. The speed of delivery so far has been in some places world-leading – but in others, at times, a national embarrassment.
The announcement that everywhere in the country will be entitled to a 10Mbps connection from 2020, a Universal Service Obligation (USO), is one of the most welcome the government has made.
Currently, it is met with hollow laughter from those constituents who have literally nothing, and sceptical excitement from those who currently don’t have enough. In my constituency of Boston and Skegness, with all the issues of having the least well-funded police force in the country, of an enormous rural road network, and where the constituency voted more than any other to leave the EU, it is not crime or pot holes or immigration that dominate the postbag: it is broadband.
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So the USO is a huge opportunity to make an economic impact, to narrow the gap between the urban and rural economy, to reform government services and to build a truly digital nation. Missing this opportunity will widen the productivity gap, see other countries streak further ahead and enrage already disadvantaged constituents.
Ofcom has not yet defined either the ‘U’, ‘S’ or ‘O’ bits of the USO, and I hope that today’s parliamentary debate will be an opportunity to shape that. After a decade or so of writing about technology for The Telegraph, my own view is that we must acknowledge that while there will always be areas where it is not economical to connect, just as with water or electricity, we should plan for a USO that is technology neutral – minimising the need for fibre optics everywhere but planning for a spine that powers wireless connectivity.
That means a 5G connection would count just as much as fibre broadband one. But by the time that 5G connection is around, the USO must also have risen with digital inflation, because 10Mbps is barely good enough for today, and certainly not good enough in perpetuity.
In manner of the Low Pay Commission, Ofcom should make recommendations each year to see the USO incrementally rise, and government might occasionally make a point of surpassing it.
And assuming this USO is like those in other industries, which essentially allocate a reasonable budget per connection, then it is vital that communities can pool their funding to attract private companies willing to take innovative paths.
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Connecting the final few per cent of the UK will require an unprecedented host of diverse solutions, from satellite broadband to full fibre. One size will not fit all, and a single company may struggle to provide the right backstop. While many views on BT will no doubt be expressed in parliament, the reality is that they will not be providing every bit of the needed solution.
Government indications that, in the hardest areas to reach, connections will be provided on request rather than by default are a pragmatic economic response, but communities should of course be incentivised to go further.
In the end, it will be communities themselves that drive the USO – as BT and others have pushed the roll-out of existing broadband further and faster than originally predicted, the howls of protest from those who are still left behind have grown only louder.
Without the USO, Britain’s digital divide will be too wide to bridge. With it, done properly, it will be the foundation for a truly digital nation. That, enabling the new industrial revolution, is the prize at stake.
Matt Warman is the Conservative MP for Boston and Skegness