UK tries to breathe fresh life into its shared rural network

The UK government issued a press release detailing how great everything will be when the shared rural network is finished.

That won’t be until the end of 2025 at the earliest, however, so the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) feels the need to bang on about it every now and then, presumably to prevent people thinking it can’t be bothered anymore. Accordingly there was no actual news, just a reiteration of how great everything’s going to be in a few years.

“We’re putting connecting people across the UK at the heart of our plan to build back better, through huge uplifts to mobile coverage in rural areas and the rapid rollout of gigabit broadband,” said Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden. “Today’s announcements will improve the lives of millions of people in rural parts of Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, giving  them the connections they need to work, access services and keep in touch – both at home and on the go.”

What announcements? The main thing was this table, formalising the before-and-after for UK geographical coverage as a result of the SRN. There was some vague whittering about partial not-spots, but that was about it. At least we have some hard data to refer to in four year’s time, assuming we still care then.