The deep divide in broadband take-up

Mapping the North-South gap

Point Topic’s new mapping of broadband geography shows how deep the digital divide is between the North and the South.

“We class 68 cities, towns and districts as having high broadband penetration, but only 3 of these are north and west of a line from the Wash to the Bristol Channel. Of the 60 with low penetration, only 6 are south of that line,” says Tim Johnson, Chief Analyst at Point Topic.

Looking more closely at the local authorities with high or low broadband penetration serves to strengthen the North-South distinction. High broadband areas are the prosperous towns, cities and extended suburbs of the four Government Regions which form the south of Britain – the South East, the South West, East of England and London.

“Population penetration, total broadband lines per head of population, is just under 33% in the South compared to just over 26% in the Northern and Western regions,” says Johnson.

Regional variations

Some notable exceptions include Cardiff which is benefitting from Capital city status and the Shetlands where a combination of a decade of support from the Scottish Government and related projects coupled with a ‘Scandinavian’ effect where internet usage tends to be higher in lands with harsh weather and long winter nights.

At the other end of the scale the picture is not quite so stark. The areas with low or very low take up are more widely distributed, although none are in London or the South East region. Some Regions are disproportionately represented, notably Northern Ireland, the North East and the Midlands, both East and West.

“The lowest take-up zones can been broadly categorised as areas of low population density with a large number of homes a long way from the telephone exchange like Teesdale or County Down and are often in regions that have been victims of industrial decline like the old mining communities in the North East, North West and Wales,” says Johnson.

One region which features much less among the low take-up areas than might be expected is Scotland. Partly this is due to its different telecoms geography. Scotland has far more telephone exchanges per head of population than the rest of the UK, many of them serving small settlements, so homes may be close to their serving exchanges even in remote areas.

“Much of the credit though must go to the Scottish Government which has spent millions to ensure that broadband is available from all the country’s exchanges. In fact the take-up picture is even better than shown here because we do not include satellite and fixed wireless broadband services which are relatively more important in Scotland,” says Johnson.

This analysis is taken from Point Topic’s BroadBand Layer. A database of the 1.7 million postcodes in the UK with associated broadband metrics. Version 10 has just been published with data to 30 June 2009.

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For background data and charts and hi-res maps please contact:

Point Topic: Oliver Johnson

Email: oliver {at} point-topic(.)com

Tel. +44 (0) 20 3301 3303

About Point Topic

http://www.point-topic.com

Point Topic is an analyst company focusing entirely on broadband. Point Topic’s international services have a global reputation for providing the most up-to-date and authoritative user statistics, supplier profiles and applications reports on DSL, FTTx, cable and other broadband services worldwide.

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