Don't quote Hegel. Haggle. It scores more marks - Mike Magee
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Country bumpkins are stuck with dial-up for now
IT'S THE SLOW LANE for rural areas' interweb access as the UK government has confirmed it will drop the divisive landline tax that would have funded broadband for the sticks.
Initially, proposals by the previous Labour government were afoot to make punters pay 50p a month as a phone landline tax to fund broadband access, by optical fibre or satellite, for every part of the UK. However, Chancellor George Osborne said today the coalition government will definitely bin the tax in favour of other revenue generating ideas such as private investment.
"I am happy to be able to abolish this new duty before it is even introduced," he said. "Instead, we will support private broadband investment, including to rural areas, in part with funding from the digital switchover under-spend within the TV licence fee."
So the fund for rural areas is only viable if the BBC doesn't blow all its cash on presenter's salaries and the roll out of terrestrial digital transmission. Actually, what under-spend there is, is only in the kitty because the government used rural areas as guinea-pigs for the switchover.
Only rural areas along the UK's west coast including Wales, Scotland, the north of England and Cornwall have been forced to switch from analogue to digital telly so far and they are the areas with limited Internet access.
But what will happen to that under-spend when the east coast of Britain with its more populous areas switches over over the next two years? How much of the rural broadband roll out cost can really be covered by this BBC licence fee? How many private firms want to invest in broadband in the sparsely populated highlands where bank and post office branches have already been closed down?
How to fund broadband in the UK has vexed all political parties since the idea of rolling-out broadband came into play in recent years. While the pre-coalition parties had fought over how to fund broadband access, the real losers in the equation will be, as always, the UK's rural areas.
We reported in April that then Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms accused the Tories of bottlenecking high-speed broadband outside major cities and towns.
Then in May the coalition government office said in a 36-page report that it would use public revenue from the BBC's licence fee to pay for broadband.
It said, "If necessary, we will consider using the part of the TV licence fee that is supporting the digital switchover to fund broadband in areas that the market alone will not reach."
Labour's rural broadband fund was essentially binned before the coalition government took power as nothing was proposed to replace it by either the Liberal Democrats or the Tories. µ
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I can't defend the idea of a tax to pay for rural internet connection.
But , you commenter's above have no idea how important the internet is today for companies.
It has nothing to do with watching videos on you tube or downloading films/music.
The internet has become a communucations platform , and a transport tool for pretty much all companies. Without email and data transfer you have no chance of expansion.You literally can not run a company in this day and age without a high speed internet connection.
The lack of highspeed internet stifles investment in rural areas and makes it difficult for companies to even consider moving out of the dirty loud shit holes we call towns and cities.
if you want growth and a new economy , new firms have to go somewhere.There is only so much urban space.Its too expensive its dirty and its stifling. Sooner or later , many companies consider the idea of moving out of urban. Most end up shelving the idea , for one simple reason, the data connection.
Its no different to how motorways and major road networks defined the hotspots of industry.
The new motorways are the high-speed internet connections. Where there are none , there will be no development and no growth.
The internet is not a toy , its an economic tool of necessity.
Up yours and the horse you rode in on!
"in the sticks"
It's "in the Styx", as in "out in the (river) Styx", as in out in the middle of nowhere.
River Styx being between land of the living and the dead; don't pay the ferryman for your education.
We'll just pay road tax so you can add another three lanes to the m25 so more dickheads can sit next to each other going nowhere.
Bit like broadband - the greater the bandwidth the less the compression and the lower the real data rate.
I really really need to see seven or eight shit youtube videos at once - I cant see how I can earn a living in the country without it...
"Only rural areas along the UK's west coast including Wales, Scotland, the north of England and Cornwall have been forced to switch from analogue to digital telly so far and they are the areas with limited Internet access."
Actually that's not entirely correct. For starters, Cornwall is not it's own country despite what the crazy buggers down there think, and DEVON, yes that place you get to before Cornwall switch to Digital way before Cornwall did, almost a year if I'm right.
In fact Torbay and transmitters feeding off Torbay (Newton Abbot, Teignmouth, Brixham etc) switched over in April 2009, about 5 months after Whitehaven and Selkirk etc switched.
Rob
...people are acting like broadband is a necessity, when it's really a luxury. I have DSL at home, and hardly spend any time on the internet anymore. Switching back to dial-up would be a pain in the ass and I wouldn't do it by choice, but on the other hand I wouldn't expect a gov't handout to give me broadband.
The phone levy wouldn't have made the slightest impression on the rural/urban digitaldivide. It was a strawman designed to put the media on the wrong foot and stop them investigating the real problems. All it would take to get next generation access out to the sticks is a level playing field for private investors and communities. The way to do it is for gov to abolish the VOA tax on lit fibre, and to compulsory purchase all the assets of the telcos in rural areas who don't want to improve their infrastructure. Throwing money at BT will only result in them paying their £9billion pension deficit off sooner. We need to get some decent competition going otherwise we will be stuck on the victorian copper for another few decades.
Bumpkins' brains are so slow that they'll never benefit from broadband anyway. They can't read any faster than dialup can display it. Their kind of music isn't available from iTunes or any P2P network. They don't read newspapers or use encyclopædias (The Bible tells them everything they need to know). And the iPlayer scares them, especially when they see footage of a moving train coming toward the screen.
I'd spend the money rolling out running water before you start worrying about putting broadband up a hill.