Predicting UK Future Residential Bandwidth Requirements
We wrote to the Broadband Stakeholder Group responding to their Green Paper on their predictions for the future broadband requirements for homes and businesses.
The Green Paper raises the prospect of another urban/rural digital divide opening, with potentially serious problems for rural economies and communities.
Our report 'Beyond Digital Divides: The Future of ICT in Rural Areas', published last year, showed that while access to broadband services in rural areas was improving, vigilance was still needed to ensure a divide does not open again as future generations of faster broadband are developed.
The report found that some differences in broadband services for urban and rural areas are starting to emerge. Already some urban areas have access to much greater bandwidth (up to 8 Megabits per second), compared with basic broadband (up to 512 Kilobits per second) in rural areas.
Access to faster broadband services can bring great opportunities for rural people, where technology removes problems of distance and isolation, and helps rural businesses be more competitive.
The importance of access to ICT in rural areas was highlighted in our recently published report 'Rural Disadvantage: Priorities for action'. The study sets out the main findings from our evidence review of rural disadvantage and highlights priorities for action for policy makers.
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Since we published our Digital Divides report in 2005, broadband speeds have risen hugely, and the division between rural and urban access has increased. There's now an opportunity for us and others to try and influence the final Digital Britain report, to help ensure that it's recommendations can deliver an effective network suitable for all areas, urban and rural.
During the response period Stuart Burgess, our chair and the Government's Rural Advocate, spoke to Lord Carter and as a result we've been asked to produce a report for him focussing on the issues faced by rural mobile and internet users. This report will provide us with the opportunity to respond to the Digital Britain report in depth.
Lord Carter also committed to try and attend our Rural Experience visit focusing on digital inclusion, to see first-hand some of the technological difficulties encountered by rural businesses and communities.
Mobile broadband offers some hope i suppose and maybe as that gets faster more peoples needs are met. There are alternitives, as a WISP (wireless internet provider ie not 3g but proper speeds that can be faster than adsl if you are willing to pay for it) i find it frustrating that the big adsl companies can advertise the 'free' services they do when if you live in a bundled area you have to pay and if you live to far from the exchange you get a rubish connection anyway.
For those in the south east attend 2 may well be able to service your needs as we don't use the phone or cable network. But there are other comapnies that offer a similar service accross the uk, failing that satalitle broadband although slower and more expensive is still a viable solution in some cases.
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