Recommendation 18

The Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review sets out government’s intention to take an ‘outside-in’ approach to rolling out gigabit-capable broadband, where areas that are currently unable to access superfast speeds are prioritised so they are not left further behind.48 The Department told us that it still aimed to focus on areas without access to superfast broadband so that those areas do not remain left behind.49 However, it said that the harder-to-reach areas are not necessarily grouped together and it could not tell us how it intended to establish a sequence for reaching them in the subsidised element of its gigabit programme.50 The National Audit Office’s report suggested that the data needed to support an ‘outside-in’ approach was patchy and of variable quality.51 The Department outlined the steps that it planned to take over the coming weeks and months to build a robust and reliable dataset on which to base planning assumptions but declined to tell us when it expected to have this.52