Some good work over at the Guardian over the past few days with respect to trying to analyse the potential super-fast broadband installation patterns for the UK under a Conservative government. The Tory proposals, published last week indicate the degree of subsidy that would be required to connect each constituency to the super-fast service, with rural communities unsurprisingly coming last in terms of affordability, which of course begs the question of when these areas could expect to get connected, if at all?
The document itself is fairly hefty but suffice to say the lower your area is on the list, the more likely you can rely on having a super-fast connection sooner rather than later. (N.B. Super-fast equates to speeds of 24mbps and above according to Of-Com). The aforementioned rural constituencies tend to be clustered near the top of the list, in many cases costing more to connect than their urban counterparts by a factor of a few hundred.
If you'd like to see where your area stands, head over to http://tinyurl.com/yhz3qoq to see the full report, and possibly check out also Charles Arthur's piece on the Guardian online for some essential background info and analysis. It's worth noting however that it's still early days with regard to this question and the fixing of a number of key variables - such as the identity of the next government - will help to provide a much clearer idea of what we can expect in a few months time.
The new infrastructure of super-fast connections will of course be key for a number of new features of our internet use over coming years, including the expansion of video-on-demand services (not only on computers but also through television sets) and extensive business orientated benefits.
However it's perhaps handy to remember that we still have parts of the country where even 'basic' broadband remains unavailable and the more pressing concern should be to ensure that this problem is rectified first and foremost, if only to 'buy time' for the (possibly delayed) arrival of super-fast connections in these areas (after all, current broadband speeds average 4mbps, though some normal lines often offer up to 8mbps - this equates to one-third of the current 'super-fast' speeds and would hence be a more than sufficient service for at least a few years).
The long term picture is that this is a central issue in order to avoid a gradual but irreversible population drain from the UK's rural areas as the internet becomes ever more central to our habits of work and leisure. For this reason a short-term view of allowing these regions to remain cut-off (for financial reasons) represents a disastrous long-term strategy as the economic ruin of such places seems likely to follow slowly but surely over a period possibly as short as a decade.
At the same time the dire state of public finances in the UK means that a considerable degree of prioritisation will be essential in coming years, and where super-fast broadband will fit into this will remain to be seen. One only hopes that the serious consequences of with-holding the expensive service to rural areas are taken into consideration and mitigated somehow if this option is taken.
Dejan Levi
