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Written evidence submitted by Cumbria County Council

UK Parliament Committee Call for evidence: Broadband and 5G

Terms of Reference:

• How realistic is the Government’s ambition of nationwide gigabit-capable broadband by 2025, and what measures (regulatory, financial, technical, other) will be needed to achieve it?
• The target is extremely ambitious, not necessarily because of regulatory or financial constraints, but because it is a huge technical and logistics challenge. At present there simply aren’t enough fibre engineers to deliver this programme and that’s before the impact of COVID-19 is taken into account.
• What are the challenges to the roll-out of 5G and gigabit-capable networks? To what extent do existing legislative, regulatory and spending plans address them?
• 5G: commercial roll-out will take place in some urban areas and cityscapes, building on existing 4G infrastructure in the first instance, but coverage can be maximised if:
• Planning Authorities enable the granting of planning permission and securing the necessary wayleaves to ensure that mobile infrastructure can be deployed where appropriate and enable maximum mobile coverage. This should take cognisance of the National Planning Policy Framework . All planning authorities should be encouraged to mandate a digital plan in any new build development.
• Legislation could be introduced to streamline the wayleave process and reduce the cost, particularly in rural areas. Difficulties in securing wayleaves are a significant barrier to the deployment of digital infrastructure.
• Public assets should be made available to host mobile infrastructure where appropriate including buildings and street furniture. The procurement of new street furniture such as lighting should consider the ability to host mobile infrastructure recognising in particular that the deployment of 5G will require significantly more infrastructure than earlier mobile technologies.
• Consideration should be given to waiving non-domestic rates to digital infrastructure within national policy guidelines.
• The importance of innovation and emerging technologies and in particular 5G is set out in the DCMS 5G Strategy 2017 and this should be recognised and reflected in Local Authority strategy and policy.
• Whilst 5G is a critical emerging technology, it will frequently be built through enhancing existing 4G infrastructure and 5G applications may need to fall-back on 4G technology when 5G signal is not available. 4G infill solutions with therefore be required to extend existing coverage of 91% of UK landmass from at least one MNO and 73% of indoor coverage. Any 4G infill solution in Cumbria will be future-proofed as much as possible to enable the hosting of 5G infrastructure in future. However, it should be recognised that 5G requires more infrastructure than 4G because of the nature of the technology and the spectrum under which it operates. This is particularly true in rural areas where host infrastructure such as public sector buildings or street furniture is not available.
• Rural 5G presents additional challenges and more research and development funding will be required to understand how best to overcome these.
• Gigabit capable networks:
• The proposal to amend the Building Regulations to mandate the delivery of gigabit capable connections in new builds and conversions is welcome, but the cap of £2,000 per premise will be breached in many rural areas. Policies need to be developed to explain how these premises will be included in line with UK Government policy.
• The £5bn of funding allocated to gigabit capable connections across the UK must be fairly allocated to ensure that no place is left behind. Existing per capita funding models will not deliver this.
• The UK Government’s F20 programme must prioritise connections to the remaining superfast not-spots in rural and deeply rural areas.
• A significant investment must be made to train fibre engineers if the country is to get close to the 2025 target. This investment is unlikely to be delivered commercially without some form of grant funding or other intervention.
• What needs to happen to ensure the Government’s ‘outside in’ approach successfully addresses the digital divide while also delivering value for money?
• The F20 programme must include demand side interventions of sufficient value to reach superfast not-spot premises e.g. vouchers and community hub site connections. These interventions must focus on <24Mbps download premises and not superfast overbuild.
• It should be recognised that the hardest to reach 1% of premises, especially in rural areas like Cumbria, are unlikely to deliver value for money. An ‘F1’ programme must therefore be created to explore alternative broadband technologies such as low earth orbit satellite and 5G.
• What does take-up of broadband and mobile services indicate about consumer and business attitudes to digital connectivity? What needs to be learnt from this for the roll-out of, and switchover to, gigabit-capable networks?
• Take-up of mobile services is now almost ubiquitous. The problem isn’t a lack of handsets, but the ability of those handsets to connect to the network. The SRN will help to address 4G not-spots, but will only cover 95% of the UK landmass by 2025. This will leave not-spots larger than 5% in areas like Cumbria and the Borderlands.
• The presence of MNO customer premises ignores the huge demand from visitors with sparsely populated areas like the Lake District receiving circa 18m visitors every year, more and more of whom expect to be able to access 4G services.
• Demand for superfast and ultrafast broadband services is growing and this trend will continue as more services are delivered digitally. Approximately 65% of premises in Cumbria that have access to superfast broadband infrastructure have now taken-up a fibre or hybrid fibre/copper service with their chosen ISP and this figure is increasing every month.
• The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the critical nature of broadband and mobile services and use of these services will continue at an elevated level long after the virus has been eradicated.
• What will be the impact on individuals and communities whose broadband and mobile connectivity fails to keep pace with the rest of the country over the next 10 years? What is the link with other DCMS policy concerns, such as changing patterns in the consumption of digital media?
• Digital inclusion is critical to the economic wellbeing of the country and no one should be left behind. Access to digital services, both government and commercial services is not possible without the infrastructure resulting in significant economic and social disadvantage to those without access to these services.
• Key industries such as agriculture and tourism will suffer without access to digital infrastructure and services and these industries are critical to rural Britain. This could result in the loss of valuable agricultural land.
• Lack of access to digital infrastructure will see an ongoing trend of an ageing rural society as the working age population moves elsewhere or is not attracted to work in rural areas. Poor digital infrastructure presents a significant risk of depopulation, especially in rural and deeply rural areas.
• Mobile infrastructure, both 4G and in future 5G, is crucial to road and rail transport so that information and data can be delivered in real time. Future autonomous vehicles will be dependent on hyper-reliable 5G infrastructure and connectivity.
• How effectively do the different stakeholders (UK and devolved governments, local authorities, Ofcom, industry) work together in both the mobile and broadband sectors? How might these relationships be improved to support gigabit-capable roll-out?
• The development of the F20 programme is critical and must secure input from Local Authorities. The hybrid model currently proposed where the contract sits with DCMS through BDUK is pragmatic, but management of the delivery of these contracts must sit locally if objectives are to be achieved. Without this local control, UK targets might be achieved, but with significant local variations that would increase digital disparity.
• Suppliers must be incentivised to deliver in the hardest to reach and therefore often the most expensive areas if they are not to prioritise more commercially attractive areas in their fibre rollouts. This means that a one price fits all approach to F20 ‘bundles’ will not work.
• A joined up approach to digital infrastructure should be adopted in interventions, recognising the convergence of full fibre and mobile infrastructure built on a fibre network core.