Helen Whately

Surely, pretty much everyone has experienced this – your phone screen goes dark, and no amount of pressing buttons or plugging in chargers will revive it. It always happens on a day when you have a million things going on. Though the disconnection from social media and phone calls can feel liberating, it’s not really an option for modern life. And how do you let people know you’re running late – inevitably – for meetings?

We expect to access the internet wherever and whenever. Except not in some places – like Headcorn and Lenham. Outside Headcorn station I can’t make a phone call, let alone pick up messages or post a tweet. And these areas tend to lag behind on broadband too.

The government has invested £1.7 billion in getting superfast broadband to areas not covered by commercial operators. As a result, 95% of all homes and businesses in England are now getting superfast broadband, and in Kent we’re up to 94%.

Credit is due to the Making Kent Quicker team in Kent County Council.

But parts of Kent are lagging behind. Only 22% of homes and businesses in Headcorn are getting superfast speeds, and 21% in Harrietsham and Lenham. Together with bad mobile signal in these villages, poor connectivity makes running a business, streaming video content, using the internet for school work or just keeping in touch a challenge.

A Universal Service Obligation for Broadband is on its way, which will mean every home and business in the UK is entitled to a 10Mbps connection, other than those above a cost threshold. Many homes still missing out on broadband are in hard-to-reach spots which are expensive to connect, so the threshold must be high enough to make sure they get high speed too.

Get in touch and I will try to help.