Light years ahead?

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The way some organisations have been speaking recently - Ofcom, BERR and BT amongst others - one would think there is still no need for speed in this country. That is not how consumers and businesses view it, as was somewhat telling when Rory Cellan-Jones presented a week's short reports on the BBC news about the Broadband nation. Over 60,000 people went to the website to comment, more than double the highest previous popular topic. And the majority of the comments were not praising their connectivity!

The rural take-up of broadband being higher than urban apparently indicates that there is no longer a digital divide. (Actually, the fact that a higher proportion of rural dwellers have even managed to get broadband considering the huge difficulties in doing so, would seem to indicate that demand in rural areas is considerably higher than in urban areas, but that is a discussion perhaps for another day: notspots become honeypots....)

Letters to the Independent from the likes of CLA seem to me to be the beginning of the campaign for rural areas to get next generation access before urban areas, and I am heartily applauding the fact that fibre to the home and the need for speed has finally made it into the mass consciousness. This is the beginning of the


FIBREVOLUTION

and it seemed from last week's BSG conference that when the likes of the Chair of Ofcom Consumer Panel and Ashley Highfield of the BBC stand up publicly and push for this level of action NOW for rural areas, one can only hope that there is much more to noise on the issue to come.

AND YOU CAN HELP.....


Next week, we shall be launching the Rural Fibre tshirts which will begin to get the message across to an ever wider audience...watch this space.