County Broadband was delighted to attend the annual Total Telecom’s Connected Britain conference (20-21 September) once again, where Chief Commercial Officer, Simon Hughes spoke on digital connectivity and rural broadband inequality as part of an expert panel.
These issues remain vital points of discussion within the telecoms industry, with many hard-to-serve and less developed regions of the UK still unable to access modern broadband speeds.
Speaking on driving the deployment of digital connectivity, Simon said: “County Broadband provides Hyperfast broadband to under-served and hard-to-serve communities in East Anglia and we do not exclude areas based on income or demographics.
“Most of the area is rural in nature alongside market towns and cities including Cambridge, Norwich, Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Sudbury, and Colchester. We’ve recently secured a combined investment of £146m to support the rollout of our services across these areas and we’re committed to connect 500,000 premises by 2027.”
Simon also discussed County Broadband’s commitment to tackling rural inequality, explaining: “The rural inequality report published in June 2022 [CV1] [S2] showed that just 30% of homes and businesses in rural communities have access to gigabit speeds compared to 70% in urban areas, leaving 10 million homes across the UK without any option, impacting the ability to work, communicate, entertain and play.
“In our rural rollouts, we ensure communal facilities such as village halls, community centres, town halls, pubs, schools, and libraries are the first to benefit from Hyperfast connectivity alongside supporting local events and festivals with temporary Wi-Fi connectivity which is often a lifeline for local traders taking part.”
Connected Britain is one of the largest telecom events in the UK, featuring connectivity leaders from across the public and private sector.
The two-day conference held 300 speakers and hundreds of exhibits from those driving Britain’s digital economy, giving insight to where the UK’s connected future was headed and what it would mean for the businesses, communities, and individuals involved.
As part of our mission to deliver full-fibre broadband to half a million homes and businesses by 2027, we’re rolling out FTTP broadband across rural areas in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex; providing 11x faster speeds than existing copper-based Superfast Broadband networks.
See if you’re in our rollout area by entering your postcode in our postcode checker.
