Thousands in the West Midlands still have no access to useable broadband despite faster coverage

The region has received £74 million in infrastructure funding under the Government's £5 billion Project Gigabit to address issues of poor mobile and broadband signal following complaints from residents and businesses in mainly rural communities.

Utility business National Broadband reviewed data from Ofcom and councils and found that the southeast and east of England got the most funding of over £250m.

Meanwhile parts of this region are among the worst locations for access. In Shropshire 6,633 homes are unable to get 10Mbits/s, the useable speed. In Powys there are 6,314; and in Birmingham there are 3,875 homes.

National Broadband director David Hennell said: “There’s a growing disparity between digital haves and have-nots and, as Project Gigabit fails to address more remote and more difficult to provision areas, this digital divide will only get worse. Far too many rural communities are still endlessly waiting on the distant promise of full fibre broadband - and yet the Government is failing to fund alternatives which exist today and which would immediately dramatically improve people's connectivity at the fraction of the cost of fibre.

“This is counter-intuitive to say the least, because full fibre connectivity is being funded for properties that already benefit from perfectly good broadband performance, while properties in more rural and harder to reach areas which are typically those suffering with the poorest landline broadband speeds are being excluded. We of course acknowledge that expanding the roll-out of full fibre broadband is a good thing. However, we find it almost impossible to understand why other solutions are not also being funded for those who have the very worst current connectivity - simply put, why are those most in need being left out?

“It’s vital that the Government expands its view on improving connectivity and that’s why we’ve launched our petition. Otherwise the pursuit of its self-set target to provide 85 per cent of properties with gigabit broadband will actually widen rather than close the digital divide that persists here."

Last year the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said gigabit-capable coverage in the region increased by 25 per cent to 76 per cent in the year to April 2022. It means the region now has the third best high speed broadband coverage in the UK, behind Northern Ireland (85 per cent) and London (81 per cent). Wales is the worst connected region on 50 per cent, despite a 22 per cent rise, while the South West is lagging behind the rest of England on 60 per cent.