Things are looking up for rural internet users as community broadband improves its game with the launch of next generation access to online services. The UK’s ICT infrastructure is developing at a fast pace, and will soon allow internet users to access their favourite sites far quicker than ever before.
For a long time, internet users in rural areas have been vastly disadvantaged, in comparison with users from built-up areas. While conventional ‘dial-up’ internet still works as well as ever in the countryside, the increased speed of broadband services – not to mention the uncluttered phone line which broadband frees up – mean that the vast majority of customers are always looking to improve their internet access with broadband services. However, the very different services experienced by people living in broadband ‘hot spots’ and those living in broadband ‘not spots’ are so far apart that the variation has been termed a ‘digital divide.’ Shockingly, those based in the ‘not spots’ pay exactly the same price for their internet access as those in ‘hot spots,’ despite the inferior service that they receive.
The average speed of internet access, considered acceptable for everyday use at home, is 8 to 10 megabytes per second – but this figure is far from being universal. Presently, about 4,000 households in the UK have no broadband access at all, because of their rural location. And there are another 2.5 million families which only receive web access at a speed of 2.5 megabytes per second. This rate of access means that streaming videos – for instance on YouTube or on TV networks’ ‘catch up’ services – is almost impossible for many rural users.
Luckily, more and more people in these rural households are finding solutions to this inequality. Many rural communities are forming co-operative ways of enjoying faster broadband; for instance, creating their own ISPs (internet service providers) by buying their own cable connections. These are expensive, but the collaboration of local businesses or well-off residents also wins them a stake in a company which may well provide returns on their investments.
This type of scheme is known as a community broadband project, in which inhabitants of a certain region club together to find internet solutions through the power of numbers. And the prospect of next generation access, in which fibre optics will replace some of the slower copper cable through which internet connection currently runs, may well change the UK’s ICT infrastructure for good.
Please visit http://www.broadbandvantage.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.
http://www.broadbandvantage.co.uk/
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