Farm groups are working with Openreach to help close the digital divide and speed up the broadband rollout in the countryside.
Access to superfast rural broadband will be generated through a newly negotiated fixed line broadband wayleave agreement and Memorandum of Understanding between Openreach, the CLA and NFU.
The new national broadband wayleave agreement and MOU is designed to make it easier for Openreach to reach agreement with landowners over locations and payment rates for cables and other electronic communications apparatus.
Smoothing the way for a faster roll-out of fixed line broadband to rural and remote areas, it comes into operation on 1 October 2018.
'Hard negotiation'
CLA Deputy President, Mark Bridgeman said landowners and farmers are a "committed and crucial" part of the solution to alleviate the rural-urban digital divide.
“It has taken almost 18 months of hard negotiation but we have secured an agreement that satisfies the Government, the infrastructure providers and our members,” Mr Bridgeman said.
“We have shown, through constructive dialogue across the industry, that rollout is not driven by price alone. A proportionate increase in the annual wayleave payment, coupled with clear documentation and an effective Memorandum of Understanding, will hasten the rollout of fixed line broadband beyond what is achievable by the revised Electronic Communications Code alone.
“A robust and effective national framework has been created which brings much needed clarity and stability to the market while at the same time injecting more money into the rural economy through accelerated deployment,” he added.
'Much-needed'
Statistics from the NFU show that a considerable amount of farmers do not have access to superfast broadband and in an increasingly digital world.
NFU Vice President, Stuart Roberts said: “The NFU and CLA have worked closely together to provide the means to enable landowners to easily reach an agreement with Openreach, bringing much-needed, effective broadband to rural areas.
“This initiative marks another step forward to ensuring our members have all they need to establish and maintain productive, profitable and progressive farming businesses.”
It follows news of a small Welsh village long suffering from inadequate broadband speeds now benefiting from some of the fastest connections in the UK thanks to the help of farmers.
