Government investment supports rural communities with faster internet speeds

Children in more than a thousand schools now have access to faster gigabit internet speeds due to government investment.

The upgrades form part of a more than £210m investment by the government to bring more modern connections to places, including 1,084 schools and libraries, where internet speeds are slower, such as in rural areas.

Most schools in the UK are in urban or suburban areas which already have access to fast full fibre broadband, but this investment focused on schools in around 30 per cent of the UK that currently cannot access speeds of 100 megabits per second and were not in line to receive an upgrade commercially from broadband companies.

The areas seeing the most schools upgraded include Norfolk (115), Wolverhampton (81), North Yorkshire (45), the Highlands (37) and Dumfries and Galloway (35).

Work is underway to bring gigabit speeds to even more schools, with 884 earmarked to be connected by March next year.

Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries MP said: “We are levelling up pupils’ and teachers’ access to the fastest future-proofed broadband, giving hundreds of schools better access to important learning opportunities, no matter where they live.

“The Government is on a mission to connect the country to next-generation networks. Today’s announcements will help harness the huge potential of 5G and future wireless networks such as 6G to supercharge our plan to build back better.”