Superfast broadband funding will boost economy by £6 billion, says new report

Research company SQW said that, by 2024, the UK economy would be bolstered by approximately £17bn by the "availability and take-up of faster broadband speeds" and that £6.3bn of this growth was "attributable to the current set of publicly funded interventions".

The Government has pledged money to help improve broadband coverage in rural parts of the UK and has also invested funds to help cities across the country deliver superfast broadband networks in their area. The Government has also announced plans to change UK planning laws to more easily facilitate the deployment of new telecoms infrastructure used to deliver broadband services.

"Over our modelling period (to 2024), these interventions are projected to return approximately £20 in net economic impact for every £1 of public investment," SQW's UK broadband impact study (57-page / 1.32MB PDF) report said. "This is an unusually high level of return for public funding, but we consider it to be realistic, given that broadband is a General Purpose Technology which has an increasingly critical role in the day-to-day operations of the majority of UK businesses."

"The Government’s interventions are substantially improving the quality of this technology across a significant proportion of the UK, which, in the long term, will benefit hundreds of thousands of businesses, employing millions of people," it added.

SQW said that most of the estimated growth to the UK economy from the superfast broadband rollout would stem from increase business productivity, but said other "significant benefits" would be felt "from safeguarding employment in areas which would otherwise be at an unfair disadvantage, from productivity-enhancing time-savings for teleworkers, and from increased participation in the labour force". It said that 56,000 extra jobs would stem from faster broadband speeds by 2024 and said 20,000 of those jobs could be attributed to the Government's funded initiatives.

The improvement of broadband speeds will also deliver social and environmental benefits, the report said. Individuals will be able to work from home more and will therefore benefit from additional "leisure time" and from reductions in their commuting costs, among other examples, it 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," Culture Secretary Maria Miller said.

"Our broadband rollout is one of the best in Europe with almost three quarters of the UK able to access superfast speeds. This is making a real difference to people in communities across the UK from small businesses able to expand, school children being able to log on to do their homework or people being able to work from home. This investment in technology is vital for our future and will help Britain continue to compete in the global race and improve the way we live and work," she added.