This part of the world is really fantastically well connected. By air, we have Southend and Stansted near by. By road, we have the A12 and A127, the M25 and M11. By rail, we have C2C, TfL and Greater Anglia carrying thousands of commuters to and from our towns. But when it comes to twenty-first-century connections – to broadband – things are still a little too patchy.
I have recently co-signed a report from the British Infrastructure Group of MPs (BIG) which investigates broadband customer services and presents the case for automatically compensating those who receive inadequate broadband speeds. The report suggests over 14,000 constituents in Brentwood and Ongar ought to be compensated for slow broadband speeds.
We’re not just talking about people living at the end of a farm track deep in the countryside. I’ve heard from constituents who live within a ten-minute walk of Brentwood town centre and suffer sluggish download speeds of less than 8mbs.This BIG report takes a comprehensive look at broadband download speeds across every UK constituency, and finds that as many as 6.7 million properties across the UK lack the proposed minimum standard of 10mbs. BIG makes the case for a comprehensive automatic compensation scheme that allows customers to be refunded for receiving unreasonably slow broadband download speeds.
Recently the Government launched a Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund which will invest £400m over the next few years to help business get access to the very best broadband service by rolling out a full fibre service. This is excellent and essential work – but we also need to make sure that domestic broadband is up to scratch.
It is ridiculous that in an age when children need broadband to do basic homework, at a time when more of our household devices require smart wifi technology to work, and when businesses are looking to enable more staff to work from home that superfast broadband speeds are out of the reach. I’ll be taking this further in the new Parliamentary session, so if you have any views on the matter please contact me via www.alexburghart.org.uk