Rural? No, just unfortunately located..

In fact I who am rural but happen to be only a couple of klicks from an exchange get a very decent 5.5Mbps synch rate..Villages as such are MOSTLY clusters in a small geographical area and are easily sorted.

Not so the vast suburban sprawls that have grown like topsy. Some of which have 5-6km line runs.

BT as a commercial operation cannot be expected to wire up non profitable areas for high speed access. The question is as to whether such areas should still be wired, and, if so, who pays and how.

There is a tendency to think it would all be some much better if BT was nationalised..those of us who can remember the GPO can assure you that for all its faults, BT is better than that!

Personally I would say that the last five miles should not be nationalised, it should be localised: BT openreach should be totally divorced from BT the group, and should be partnered with county and borough councils, and the infrastructure paid for out of local taxes.

The ISPS can stay as private listed companies or whatever- that's competition which is needful.

The ISPs including NT Internet can then rent rack space in the local exchanges.

Backhaul is a national issue of course, and there is some argument that a national fibre network is not a bad thing to subsidise: As long as its not RUN by the government.

Almost anything that is run by a government ends up as a total disaster. Elections seem to be the worst of all possible worlds when it comes to selecting competent managers of anything.