Superfast broadband to reach 600,000 more rural homes in UK

The British government is aiming to connect an extra 600,000 homes in rural areas to superfast broadband, after BT released almost £300 million of funds back into a scheme designed to address the gap between speeds available in the countryside and in cities. The original subsidies provided by the government to BT to roll out superfast broadband — of speeds of at least 24 Mbps — to rural areas included clawback mechanisms if take-up was better than expected. The cash was described as a “windfall” by the government, which was criticised during the early stages of the Broadband Delivery UK project for handing all the contracts to BT and being unclear about when specific regions would benefit and how the costs would be shared.