Head of £5bn Rural Broadband Upgrade to Leave Due to Deployment Failures

Paul Norris is due to step down as CEO of Building Digital UK in September. Credit: DCMS Comms/dcms < p>The head of the £5bn government rural broadband upgrade program is set to step down amid fears the project will fail.

The Telegraph may report that Paul Norris, chief executive of Building Digital UK (BDUK), will retire in September after three years.

He will be replaced by Dean Creamer, the government official who oversaw the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

It has come to light that letters announcing the changes were sent out to a wide range of industry players earlier this month.

Many sources have reported that Mr. Norris has been ousted due to fears of slow progress.< /p>

BDUK is overseeing a £5bn flagship government project to bring high-speed internet connectivity to remote areas where the cost cannot be commercially justified.

Dubbed Project Gigabit, the scheme aims to coverage of 85 per cent of the UK by the end of 2025 and nationwide coverage by 2030.

The latest government update released last month showed that 76% of UK premises have access to high-speed broadband, up from 6% at the beginning of 2019.

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However, BDUK has come under fire for not being that he was unable to deploy Internet services where they are most needed.

A report released earlier this month said that only one in 10 local governments with the worst broadband connectivity has received funding from the Gigabit project, while 50% of homes without access to the minimum broadband speed are still waiting for investment.

A report commissioned by mobile internet provider National Broadband accuses the government of instead investing in densely populated areas that are much easier and cheaper to reach to achieve its own goals.

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The report says: “This results in full fiber connectivity being funded for sites that already enjoy excellent broadband performance, while sites in more rural and hard-to-reach areas tend to suffer the worst current speeds.” fixed line broadband are excluded.

“Such policies will actually widen the digital divide, not help close it.”

A government spokesman said: “Our £5bn Gigabit project The program is on track to deliver nationwide gigabit broadband by 2030 and we have already committed £1.9bn and we will be spending more as we continue to provide this assistance to communities that would otherwise miss out.

«76 per cent of UK homes and businesses, including Portsmouth & Penrith and Swansea & Stirling, are already using gigabit connections, up from 6 per cent in 2019 — a huge increase thanks to our targeted support in some of the most rural and hard-to-reach some parts of the country.