Conservative party leadership candidate Boris Johnson has pledged to provide full fiber connectivity to the UK in its entirety by 2025, when he becomes prime minister. In his column in The Telegraph, Johnson stated that it was a "shame" that rural communities did not have access to very high speed, and said that the government's current goal of achieving coverage by the 2033 horizon was "ludicrously ambiguous". Johnson, who previously served in this government as Foreign Secretary, did not disclose details of how his target would be funded or achieved faster than the current target.
Boris Johnson broadband
"If we want to unite our country and our society, we must now commit to providing full fiber much more quickly," he said. "We need to prioritize rural areas that are far away, the three million homes and businesses are among the hardest 10% to cover." Today, more than 95% of the UK has access to super-fast broadband, most of which uses Fiber to the Cabinet (FTTC) technology, which uses copper for the last few hundred meters of the connection. However, the government has stated that it wants "full fibre" to be the default technology and has promised new regulations and investment to support this ambition. In addition, the Ofcom regulator proposes new policies that would encourage investment from the private sector. Openreach, a BT-owned company, is embarking on a major fiber to site (FTTP) buildout project with ambitions to reach 15 million installations by the middle of the next decade. At the same time, other providers such as TalkTalk, Virgin Media, CityFibre, Gigaclear and Hyperoptic are also investing in infrastructure. The government has also established a Universal Service Obligation (USO) that allows anyone in the country to "apply" for a decent broadband connection. In practice, this is a fixed line, but satellite access or fixed wireless access is an alternative. It is estimated that fewer than 600,000 homes and businesses are not covered by high-speed, high-speed broadband deployments. Rural activists have often called for better broadband and mobile connectivity, saying it affects quality of life. Via the Daily Telegraph