By now, a lot of people have heard of the urban-rural divide. This is where urban centres get better, closer infrastructure than rural parts of the UK, creating a disparity in internet services. However, the government has identified a new divide taking place within Britain’s biggest cities – the urban digital divide. This is a disparity between flat accommodation and other urban residential buildings, revealed by Ofcom in 2024.
Why internet access is important
To most, the internet is a convenience that allows us to find easy entertainment or send messages, pictures and work files instantaneously. For entrepreneurs, it’s a lifeline and the largest marketing platform in the world, allowing start-ups to gather an audience through social media and other promotional efforts. There are even homegrown British industries that wouldn’t exist at all without the internet, like iGaming. Using dedicated websites, users can access games through the casino online at Paddy’s, which hosts a variety of slot games that rely on a basic internet connection to work properly. iGaming is just one example of this, with e-commerce and even streaming services all being examples that count on their customers having working internet.
The importance of internet access becomes more apparent on a wider scale. It is crucial to Britain’s large remote workforce, and supports systemic efficiency in governance and business, spurring economic growth as a result. Both individuals and the UK’s growing tech sector don’t just rely on the internet as it is today, but also on the promise that they’ll have it in the future. As digital services become more advanced, so do their data demands, which necessitates a faster, higher-quality internet connection. Communities without fast internet today risk getting left behind, unable to keep up with the demand that could come from digital work and entertainment in decades to come.
The new digital divide
In May of 2024, the House of Commons published an insight page that drew from the latest Ofcom data. It showed that broadband in flats had a lower gigabit availability when compared to other residences. Gigabit availability is a metric used to measure internet quality – it tracks how many households can receive one gigabit per second download speeds from an accessible ISP that covers their region.
Ofcom’s data showed that urban postcodes contain anywhere from 65% to 75% of flat accommodation. In areas where flats are three-quarters of all residential buildings, the average gigabit availability starts to suffer and records just 78%. This is compared to 89% in urban areas where less than a quarter of premises are flats. This means that after discounting the urban-rural divide, there is still a disparity seemingly driven by flats.
Urban areas in the North West suffer from the worst disparity – a 22% gap between areas that are three-quarter flats and those with one-quarter flats. When averaged out, Great Britain as a whole has a 12% disparity. The least affected area is Scotland but its data exists in a broader context – Scottish constituencies have some of the worst internet services in the UK.
For London, areas that are three-quarters flats have 84% gigabit availability against 93% for those areas that have just one-quarter of flat residences. That makes a 9% disparity, which is actually closer to the lower end for most urban postcodes studied by Ofcom. However, Parliament warns that the legal and infrastructural concerns about flats and other rented accommodations can compound over time.
As the government and telecom companies work to combat the urban-rural divide, the country’s city planners should be aware of this new challenge to equitable, high-quality internet access. If not, large swathes of Britain’s urban population could suffer from lacklustre internet quality in the future.
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