To help people and businesses take advantage of the projects and interventions funded through the DI directorate, the UK needs high quality coverage. Through the Wireless Infrastructure Strategy published in 2023, the UK announced its ambition to deliver nationwide coverage of standalone 5G to all populated areas by 2030. This will bring its full benefits to villages and rural communities well beyond cities and towns.
A premises is classified as ‘very hard to reach’ when it is out of scope to be built commercially or through a government funded intervention scheme. This could be for one of several reasons, such as being in a remote location. DSIT analysis shows that potentially less than 100,000 premises are likely to be too costly to connect to a gigabit-capable connection. As such, they may require government intervention to provide them with an ultrafast broadband connection.
‘The Very Hard to Reach premises alpha trials aim to assess the extent to which low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites can be used to deliver high-speed low latency broadband connections to more than a dozen ‘very hard to reach’ locations.’