Don’t believe claims on fast broadband in homes, says ex-minister

OFFICIAL government figures claiming that nine out of ten households have access to superfast broadband are meaningless and flawed, a former business minister has claimed.

Anna Soubry said she became suspicious about the statistic, based on data from BT, after talking to people in the real world who struggled with slow internet speeds.

She claimed hundreds of thousands of homes were being left without high-speed broadband because of failings by BT – and she called for the telecoms giant to be split up.

Mrs Soubry said she told her officials to review the ‘nine out of ten’ statistic before she was sacked as a minister when Theresa May entered Downing Street last month. She told the Daily Telegraph: ‘It looks like a good headline, but when you dig down and listen to people in the real world you get incredibly suspicious that it’s a meaningless statistic. The vibes I’m getting back from the real world are that this is not accurate.

She added: ‘I don’t trust these figures at all. Diving into those

‘I don’t trust these figures at all’

figures and revealing them, which I was in the process of doing before I left Government, I think you will find will show that those figures are flawed.’

BT has been under intense pressure to sell its Openreach division, which owns Britain’s broadband infrastructure network and which rival providers rely on to connect to their customers. Telecoms regulator Ofcom was widely expected to call for BT to be broken up following a review last month, but ended up rejecting the option.

Mrs Soubry, the Tory MP for Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire, criticised the watchdog’s decision, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday: ‘I was very surprised that was pulled back on, because I’m sorry but they have not delivered. We cannot do business properly until we have full delivery on superfast broadband.’

BT’s rivals argued customers would be best served by completely separating BT and Openreach. But instead of a full breakup, Ofcom proposed the formation of an independent company within BT.

A BT spokesman said: ‘Independent data clearly shows that 91 per cent of UK premises have access to superfast speeds today and this will rise to 9 per cent by the end of 2017.’