Sheee....eeessshhh! - Eva Glass
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UK Government boosts rural broadband
THE UK GOVERNMENT has - what, again? - pledged money to encourage the rollout of broadband in rural areas.
Defra, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has done the 'look behind the sofa cushions' trick and come up with funding worth £26 million to help end the digital and social divide between urban and rural residents.
"England's uplands communities face difficult challenges, as do other remote parts of rural England, yet these are places with a remarkable range of human and natural assets and they can have a bright future. I am determined that these areas will not be overlooked and that is why I will champion their interests right from the centre of Government," said Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman as she announced the e-farmer fund.
"Making a living as a hill farmer can be very difficult without the payments which reward the valuable environmental contribution they make, and unless farmers get help to innovate and diversify."
The money to promote provision of broadband access to remote rural areas is set to last until 2015, Defra claims.
"Remote and rural areas have the most to gain from access to broadband but these are the communities currently missing out," said Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport.
"The whole of the UK should be able to share in the benefits of broadband and we are determined to make this happen by the end of the Parliament." µ
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How do they define the term "broadband"?
This has been an issue in Sweden too. The vast majority of the population can (at least) have xDSL to some degree or the other, but in very rural areas the trend now is to remove the copper phone lines and only provide mobile phone service.
At the same time the "mobile broadband" services improve, but they're nowhere near the bandwidth available with fixed lines in more densely populated areas.
2 Mbps is okay for surfing the net, but it's nowhere near the 80 Mbps download speed I've got at home (provided principally for free by the housing cooperative).
I live in a rural community. We don't have cable or DSL. Satellite is $59 monthly with a daily cap of 200MB. The fasted test I've ever had was 750 kbps. Most of my neighbors can't afford the $250 install fee so they are still on dialup. What century is this?
Back when I were a lad, it would have been hard to imagine a future in which Britain would be desperately trying to catch up with South Korea in terms of technology... without a snowball's chance in Hell of ever doing so.