Faster broadband speeds to become a legal right

Broadband providers are to face a legal requirement to provide homes and businesses with faster broadband speed by 2020, the UK government has announced.

It promised that the UK will have access to speeds of at least 10Mbps by 2020 and has said the regulatory Universal Service Obligation offers “certainty”.

The regulator Ofcom said four per cent of UK properties, about 1.1 million, had no access to broadband speeds of at least 10Mbps and that poor speeds were a particular concern for small businesses, with some 230,000 unable to get a reliable service.

Matt Hancock, minister of state for digital, told the BBC Today programme: “Access means you can phone up somebody, ask for it and then someone has the legal duty to deliver on that promise.

“It is about having the right to demand it, so it will be an on-demand programme.

“So if you don’t go on the internet, aren’t interested, then you won’t phone up and demand this.”

The government previously rejected a voluntary offer from BT, which is responsible for the infrastructure.

In response to the announcement, BT said: “BT and Openreach want to get on with the job of making decent broadband available to everyone in the UK, so we’ll continue to explore the commercial options for bringing faster speeds to those parts of the country which are hardest to reach.”