No one will deny that the times are tough and it is hard to maintain promises involving extensive expenditure. The UK government has demonstrated this with its flagging dedication to the Digital Britain initiative. It has fallen back from its promises and acknowledged that it would now be a problem to connect everyone by broadband, which is a serious blow to its much publicised “broadband for all” objective.

Lord Carter has himself told The Telegraph that about 25 to 30 percent of the total area of the country is unfavourable for a high-speed fixed line broadband. This is due to the fact that such a network would be economically unviable in those places.

Thus, the only logical solution, as hinted in the Digital Britain report, is to look at the mobile and satellite broadband networks to fill the gaps in rural areas. However, the worrying fact is that T-Mobile has already declared that such a venture is not economically viable for mobile broadband providers either. It is expected that other mobile operators could soon join T-Mobile in its stand.

Thus, the situation looks grim, and it seems that after all Digital Britain will not be able to provide a broadband connection to every household as the government had promised it would.

People, especially those living in rural areas, are understandably not happy about this. The president of Country Land and Business Association, Henry Audrey-Fletcher, remarked that the unavailability of broadband was dividing the society. Rural businesses are losing out as they find it hard to compete with urban businesses, which are seeing higher productivity due to better connectivity. Similarly, students living in rural areas are unable to access online information and may find it hard to compete with students from urban areas.