This would be in place of the government’s currently proposed universal service obligation that would make it a legal right of every person in the UK to demand broadband speeds of at least 10Mbps.
Rather than waiting to be called out by the government however, BT believes its ‘proactive’ proposal would work better by investing some £600m with the promise to get at least 10Mbps to the whole of the UK by 2022.
To give you some idea of the scale of the plan Ofcom believes around 1.4 million homes are getting speeds below the 10Mbps benchmark.
Speaking to Reuters, BT’s chief executive Gavin Patterson said: “We already expect 95 percent of homes and businesses to have access to superfast broadband speeds of 24Mbps or faster by the end of 2017,”
“Our latest initiative aims to ensure that all UK premises can get faster broadband, even in the hardest to reach parts of the UK.”
BT says that it would be able to make its money back by charging through customer bills.
For the final 1% of homes BT believes that broadband speeds would have to be provided via satellite connection.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has said it will consult on the offer but warned that if it accepted, the deal would be legally binding.
Which? recently revealed the worst (and best) broadband speeds in the UK with Scotland coming out as a part of the country that was particularly suffering.
The consumer organisation Which? carried out a huge survey of 719,000 speed tests across the country and found that many parts of the UK were not receiving the legal minimum of 10Mbps that the government set out in 2015.
The list of places with the worst broadband speeds included:
- Orkney Islands - 6.3Mbps
- Shetland Islands - 8.4Mbps
- Highland - 8.8Mbps
- Ryedale - 9.0Mbps
- Purbeck - 9.0Mbps