Broadband services are increasingly being categorised as a public utility, and rightly so. Like it or not, very few of us can claim the internet does not have a significant bearing on our lives. Indeed, many of the things we traditionally define as infrastructure – the schools, hospitals and emergency services which underpin our communities as well as the road and rail routes that get us from A to B – can function without it. Patient data cannot be accessed or learning material distributed. The list goes on.

And yet digital infrastructure in Britain lags well behind many of our international counterparts. This must change if we are to maintain our status as a competitive, cosmopolitan country open to business and it is something the Government is investing £1.7bn to address.