ON December 27, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport issued a press release, a piece of carefully worded spin that echoes rather hollowly here in Devon.

It makes the most of generalised statistics such as "almost nine out of 10 homes and businesses have "superfast" broadband.

Obfuscation and confusion is clearly the order of the day when you read Minister Vaizey’s statement where it quotes three different speeds, which by implication are all deemed "superfast" - 2, 10 and 24 Mbps.

These are superfast only in the imagination of the Department of Culture Media and Sport; even Estonia sets itself harder targets.

The fact of the matter is that Devon and Somerset are now one year behind almost every other county in England at getting Phase 2 of Superfast Broadband roll-out off the ground (the bit that will cover the 90-95 per cent, and largely poorly served, rural chunk of the population).

Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS), the organisation responsible for interfacing between district and county councils in our area and the central government’s Broadband Delivery UK, is now on its third attempt to find suppliers to install Phase 2, after they dumped 25 suppliers who attended their previous Phase 2 supplier day in 2014. They then failed to secure an exclusive contract with BT in June 2015.

The contract negotiation with BT collapsed in June because not one District Council in Devon would commit a penny of match funding, because CDS could not, or would not, tell them what they would be buying for their (our taxpayer) money.

EU State Aid for this infrastructure programme expired on June 30, 2015, and as a result an exemption agreement is having to be negotiated with Brussels and the EU Competition Commissioner.

In turn this will force the Phase 2 contract to be broken up into six or more small contracts for smaller areas of the two counties and that any supplier who is awarded a contract will be required to make all their infrastructure (fibre cable, ducts, masts, DSLAM cabinets, etc.) available to all their competitors to use. Whilst not in itself a bad thing, this complicates the issue somewhat, and may result in more performance inequality than otherwise.

With council budgets tighter for 2016 than they were in 2015, even if contracts with suppliers get signed in the second half of 2016, there is likely to be less money available for the Phase 2 programme than there was in June 2015.

In any event, the start of any actual infrastructure installation under Phase 2 seems unlikely in the real world before the end of 2016.

We, the tax-payers, do not know exactly what the third attempt at Phase 2 will deliver; opacity is still the order of the day.

However, a good guess is that specifications will continue to be based on the old thinking of a decade ago. Twentieth century speed targets, with upload slower than download - capabilities that are not fit for long-term purpose and will need expensive re-examination in the not too distant future.

Community-led installations like those of "Broadband for the Rural North" (search on-line for B4RN) have successfully taken a different approach, using fibre-to-the-premises across moorland and open countryside. There, every house and business in an area is served as a matter of principle, the difficult ones as well as the easy ones.

They rate symmetric 1000 Mbps upload and download as "superfast", not a piddling 2 Mbps. An unlimited data package at these future-proof speeds costs their 1500+ customers just £30/month. Perhaps we should look to such schemes, or at least such imaginative thinking and planning, for the rural unserved down here...

If you feel strongly about this, and if you live in the more remote countryside I suggest you should, please consider sharing your feelings (and your business case, if that applies) with your parish, local and county councils.

After all, it’s your money that will be used, and at present we still have a window of opportunity to voice our opinions before final Phase 2 tenders are invited!

Mike Brett

Allerdown Farm

Signpost Lane

Sandford