An English village is still without broadband, 26 years after it was rolled out in the UK – as upgrades were delayed and cancelled for years.
Frustrated residents in Godshill, Hampshire, have battled to get broadband in their village for 14 years, but have waited so long they feel forgotten about.
The 500-person rural village in New Forest National Park was promised broadband by the UK government and Wessex Internet, but the plans have always fallen through, leaving many without Wi-Fi.
Godshill was even dropped from the £16million government-funded Project Gigabit in March this year, despite most of the village still relying on Victorian-era copper wiring for internet cables.
The project is meant to bring fast and reliable broadband to hard to reach communities such as Godshill and aims to cover 99 per cent of households by 2032.
But with no broadband upgrade in sight, villagers have been forced to spend up to £100 a month for Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite Wi-Fi, while others tapped into the local holiday park’s Wi-Fi just to get online.
If villagers do not pay for expensive Wi-Fi or resort to workarounds, locals face internet speeds of just 1Mpbs, which is not fast enough to send emails with attachments.
In a final attempt to get broadband installed in Godshill, villagers have said their last ‘recourse is to kick up a fuss’.
Kevin Moore, 68, a retired accountant who moved to Godshill with his wife eight years ago, said sorting broadband ‘has been my obsession’ after mooted upgrades repeatedly fell through.
Godshill, Hampshire, has been without broadband since it was rolled out in Britain back in 2000
Many frustrated villagers have been forced to pay for expensive broadband such as Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite Wi-Fi
Pictured: Kevin Moore, 68, a retired accountant who moved to Godshill eight years ago with his wife, said their Wi-Fi would cut off after 4pm
He said: ‘I’ve been trying to sort it out and we kept being told it would be sorted by different people.
‘When we first moved in we got a letter saying broadband would be upgraded in three years, then we got a letter saying it would be a couple more years, and that carried on.’
Mr Moore said his Wi-Fi cut out at 4pm and that he and his wife never saw connection stronger than 25Mbps, so the couple paid for a pricey upgrade.
‘If you have a higgledy piggledy house like us that can block the signal. I have a sort of mancave that only gets 4 or 5Mbps. I would stream things, but it just doesn’t load and all just takes forever’, he added.
‘We’ve now taken the jump into Elon Musk’s world with Starlink. It was a huge hassle to set up, it took me days. But it’s stellar compared to what we were getting.’
Broadband was first rolled out in Britain in 2000 and more than 96 per cent of households now have it, figures show – but Godshill has remained in the four per cent missing out on Wi-Fi.
Some homes in the remote village were upgraded by Openreach to fibre broadband in 2012 and the rest of the properties were promised an upgrade – but it never came.
Wessex Internet informed villagers and the council in December 2023 that Godshill was in its publicly-funded Project Gigabit rollout that would cover all 159 homes not to have been previously upgraded.
Peter Woodward, 62, vice-chair of Godshill Parish Council, said many elderly residents need a stable internet connection for their fall alarm systems
But Godshill was let down by the scheme, after it was amended and no longer included the village, leaving residents feeling ‘simply dropped’.
Wessex Internet said that a private company – which is unconfirmed – would introduce broadband to the area in the future.
Yet many elderly villagers could not wait for an upgrade and purchased Musk’s Wi-Fi as their fall alarm systems went digital.
Without a stable internet connection, many of the older residents lived in fear of not receiving help if they suffered a fall or were hurt in their own homes.
Peter Woodward, 62, vice-chair of Godshill Parish Council, said this ‘worrying’ issue has been ongoing since 2012.
He said: ‘Our only recourse is to kick up a fuss. The village has about 500 residents and the original plan had 159 homes covered.
‘People are struggling to reach speeds of one, two, three, four Mbps so they are resorting to using 5G or paying for Starlink.
‘The age profile of the village is quite old and one of the issues is that they’re moving everything onto digital.
‘A big concern with people who are elderly is that with the copper wires being taken out or made defunct their fall alarms aren’t working.’
The parish council’s chairman Richard Fell described the situation as ‘deeply concerning’.
He said: ‘We were part of the Government’s original rollout plans, and now we’ve been removed on the basis that someone else will deliver – yet no-one can tell us who that is.
‘We are not an isolated or unviable location. Fibre is already being deployed in surrounding areas. We have simply been dropped. This is exactly what rural communities were told would not happen.
‘Instead, we are seeing promises made, plans announced and then communities quietly being dropped.’
Godshill is a rural village in Hampshire with a 12th century Iron Age hill fort and a church.
The 500-person village has a 100-year-old pub called The Fighting Cocks as there used to be a cock pit in the area.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology was approached for comment.
Wessex Internet was also approached for comment.
