Government spending watchdog the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has criticised BT's monopoly of the government's much trumpeted but heavily delayed rural broadband roll-out.

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The government has pledged to facilitate the roll-out of superfast rural broadband coverage in areas of Britain where purely commercial internet providers will not invest in infrastructure. The aim was to achieve this by 2015.

The scheme has the backing of Defra – the department claims better communication technology will help to grow the rural economy. However, concerns over the project's lateness have been augmented by BT's monopolisation of local authority contracts; at the outset of the scheme only two companies – BT and Fujitsu – were bidding for public contracts, though all of the 26 contracts let by June 2013 had gone to BT and, after Fujitsu dropped out of the bidding process in March 2013, the remaining 18 appear likely to follow suit.

Landowners' lobby group the Country Land and Business Association said on Friday that there is now "no chance of meeting the 2015 roll-out deadline set by the Government" and lambasted the one horse race identified by the Committee of MPs as a "flop", which the government has failed to manage fairly or transparently.

In a report on the broadband scheme, released on Thursday, Committee chair Margaret Hodge MP, offered a damning overview of the "mismanaged" project so far. She said the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has failed to deliver a fair price for taxpayers, through its procurement policy because, "The sole provider BT has been placed in a quasi-monopolistic position which it is exploiting by restricting access to cost and roll-out information."

Ms Hodge continued, "We now have a situation where local authorities are contributing over £230 million more to the programme than forecast in the Department's business case, while BT is committing over £200 million less… and BT will end up owning assets created from £1.2 billion of public money."

Community organisers excluded from mismanaged broadband scheme

In addition to these concerns, BT has been allowed to suppress information on where it will be providing coverage, meaning other companies have been preventing from addressing the dearth of communications technology in the estimated ten percent of rural Britain that will not be covered by the scheme. "BT is supposed to provide at least 90 percent coverage in rural areas," said Ms Hodge. "But it is preventing local authorities from publishing proper information on the areas the company will and will not cover [which is] stopping communities and others from identifying alternative ways of providing superfast broadband."

Although the Public Accounts Committee and CLA have criticised the rural broadband roll-out, claiming that mismanagement of the "procurement process [has defeated] the objective of a competitive system," others believe that the entire financialised process has been a missed opportunity.  The Plunkett foundation, which offers support to community organisations and cooperatives, warned last year that, "The issue of high speed broadband for rural communities is about more than just technology; communities themselves will need to play a crucial role in bridging the gap between government and market plans and lack of provision, but the debate so far has failed to empower communities."

Not content to defer to the government and BT, or concerned that they may form part of the 10 percent of rural communities left in the dark, a number of community groups have come together in rural regions to establish broadband access for themselves. One such group is the Bay Broadband Cooperative in Robin Hood's Bay, North Yorkshire, a 'not for profit' Social Enterprise Co-operative set up to bring broadband to the remote coastal village and its surrounding farms. 

Labour MP for Barking, Ms Hodge concluded on Thursday that issues with the procurement process "together with the Department admitting the programme will be delivered in 2017—two years later than planned," whilst the public is left footing a larger than expected bill represents "a raw deal" for the taxpayer.

Though the DCMS and BT both defended the process, with BT going so far as to accuse the parliamentary Committee as being "simply wrong," the PAC maintained that the current procurement process represents "a serious risk to value for money" and that lenient public contracts have weakened local Authorities' negotiating position with BT.

The PAC advised DCMS not to spend any of the extra £250 million made available for the project post-2015 until the department has "developed approaches to secure… value for money." The Committee also urged the government to push for higher contributions and greater transparency from BT, arguing that the rural broadband network will be a valuable asset for the supplier, and that this does not appear to have been taken into account in relations so far.   

Lastly, MPs on the PAC recommended the Department publish BT's detailed roll-out plans "as a matter of urgency" so that other suppliers can begin trying to reach the remaining 10 percent of communities that will still be without superfast broadband after the project. It also recommended competition watchdog Ofcom, which is reviewing the broadband market this year, looks into the rural broadband scheme.