Just as a counter: I live in a very rural part of the country, pretty sparsely populated and yet I get 1Gbps fibre. There’s a new company rolling out in the area promising 10Gbps, it’s kind of insane. So these programs do work.
And as another counter, in my village there is no (!!) signal at all. At my house I can only get one bar of 4G outside the house. Broadband is capped at 1mbit up and 10mbit down. But we have Starlink, so it’s fine. Not everyone can afford that though. The infrastructure has been promised for a decade now. Beyond ridiculous. Being in a national landscape (formerly AONB) doesn’t help either