Live in a Rural Area? You’ll Have to Request Broadband!

As technology advances, so does the needs and the things that are accepted as standard. Back in the day, it was a luxury to have a dial-up connection, often cutting out the evening’s use of the telephone as you waited for pages to load at the slow speeds. Now people all across the UK are used to broadband, and this is considered the standard by everyone, including the government. The Universal Service Obligation that was announced last year to help provide the country with acceptable high-speed broadband as standard will be leaving some people in the dark as those considered rural will have to request broadband be installed in their area.

The news comes after a consultation document about the Universal Service Obligation (USO) which says that “given the high costs of providing broadband access to premises in remote areas it is right that this is done on request, rather than rolling it out and waiting to see if people in those areas want to be connected”.

The current target for the USO was to provide 95% or more of the houses in the UK with fast broadband, a definition that is seen as shifting on an almost yearly basis. While the USO’s funding has yet to be announced or discussed, any people see fast internet as an increasingly required feature in the ever-changing digital world that we live in.