Farron: Government must invest in Cumbrian broadband

The government must do more to ensure rural areas have a decent broadband connection, according to South Lakes MP Tim Farron. New research from Ofcom shows that more than a million homes across the UK are still unable to get a "decent" broadband connection.

The data also shows that Cumbria still lags significantly behind the national average when it comes to access to superfast broadband. Nationally, almost 90% of premises have superfast access, meaning speeds of 30Mbit/s or more.

However, in Cumbria, 26% of premises cannot get speeds above 10mbps.

Tim said: ""Here in South Lakeland, local people count themselves lucky if they can get above 2mbps download speed, and if they are in business that means that they have to cope with upload speeds that are a fraction of that.

"The UK cannot hope to compete internationally when countries like South Korea are already rolling out speeds of over 1Gps.

"Fast and reliable broadband is a utility and I believe it must be treated as such. The government must do more to invest in broadband in rural areas."