Tag: DEFRA

Further action taking place to cover rural UK with real broadband

Articles

thinkbroadband :: Work and live in rural UK? Get your applications in to receive superfast broadband

DEFRA press release

Rural Community Broadband Fund page – Department of Culture, Media And Sport

My Comments

There has been further action taken at high-level government to make sure that rural communities in the UK are able to benefit from real broadband.

Infact DEFRA, the government department who are responsible for farming and forestry issues there are offering funds to provide Internet service beyond what the Broadband Delivery UK program are currently offering.

It is part of the second release of funds from the Rural Community Broadband Fund and is encompassing the hill farmers who are less likely to get real broadband. But this effort was part of newer financial incentives that were to target the rural community by the Farming Minister, Jim Paice.

There has been the issue of what technology to use, with the idea of implementing a fixed-wireless technology like “white-space” wireless broadband. But the European Union prefer to run with a fibre-rich wired technology if they have a hand in next-generation broadband setups and consider fixed-wireless as a “basic broadband service” alongside ADSL2. The question that was raised is whether a high-speed fixed-wireless link can be an answer for some rural areas where it is cost-prohibitive to roll out fibre-optic broadband.

Personally, I see this as another step, and one taken by a rural-affairs government department, to assure rural Britain of having access to decent-bandwidth real broadband Internet.