UK Broadband Impact Study published

UK Broadband Impact Study published

The DCMS-commissioned UK Broadband Impact Study by SQW was released yesterday morning, and was welcomed by Culture Secretary Maria Miller MP who said “What this report shows us is that as well as superfast broadband being good for economic growth it will make even more of a positive impact on the way we live, helping us work more productively and get online faster.”

The study estimates that the availability and take-up of faster broadband speeds will add about £17 billion to UK GVA by 2024. This level of uplift contributes an average of 0.07 % to real annual GVA growth over this period.

The study estimates the following economic results relating to interventions made by the Government’s broadband programme:

  • The GVA impacts attributable to the current set of publicly funded interventions rise to about £6.3 billion p.a. by 2024, which is equivalent to an uplift of 0.03 percentage points on the UK’s real annual GVA growth.
  • The total net employment impacts from faster broadband rise to about 56,000 jobs at the UK level by 2024, and about 20,000 jobs are attributable to the publicly funded intervention.
  • Publically funded interventions are projected to return approximately £20 in net economic impact for every £1 of public investment.
  • The government’s broadband programme is a significant short-term boost to the UK economy as the network construction adds around £1.5 billion to the economy; adding £0.5 billion and about 11,000 jobs in 2014.

The report also considers a number of social and environmental impacts (see p.32 and p.41 respectively), including household savings of £45 million a year by 2024 made through people being able to work from home more.

Note: the impact estimates relating to publically funded interventions do not include the further proposed interventions announced in the Spending Review in June 2013 on extending superfast broadband to 95% of premises by 2017 (i.e. the impact assessment is based on the previous ambitions set out for the Rural Programme at 90%, the Rural Community Broadband Fund and the Urban Broadband Fund). The impacts associated with mobile broadband connectivity and the Mobile Infrastructure Project are not addressed in this report.