While Government funds remain focussed on fixed-line services, the pace at which rural Britain could get access to reliable and faster broadband risks being unnecessarily slow.
Alan Bird needs fast broadband. As a farmer in the Northern Fells of Cumbria with more than 26,000 hens, he provides eggs to retailers across the UK and needs a fast network connection to stay competitive.
His distributors demand a constant stream of data from his egg packing stations, something that has so far proved nearly impossible on slow and unreliable broadband speeds. Based in the beautiful rural countryside, his business was at risk.
But thanks to superfast 4G mobile services arriving in Cumbria, Alan is now able to fulfil the orders of his retail customers who make sure all those boiled eggs get to Britain’s breakfast tables.
It is my company’s ambition to help many more rural and semi-rural businesses take advantage of the progress we are making introducing 4G mobile broadband speeds, which are five to 10 times faster than 3G services.
EE is committed to investing £1.5bn in our network over three years. We have already rolled out 4G to 160 cities and close to 70pc of the UK population, and across 100 square miles of rural Cumbria – with 100 more square miles of the region to come in 2014.