A recent study conducted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has found that while the majority of UK farmers were now connected to broadband, superfast broadband was still not a wide spread option because of the lack of its availability in rural areas.
Rural broadband
The study found that 60 per cent of rural locations could only get speeds below 2Mbps, 32 per cent were connected to a service which could achieve speeds above 2Mbps and 6 per cent were still using old-fashioned dialup services. What’s more,…
Edita Lozovska - 15 April 2013 | comments. Read more
The village of Islip in Oxfordshire have raised £11,000 of their own money to pay for super-fast broadband.
As Islip was not on the list for not being commercially viable but nearby Kidlington was, the residents are making sure that they will not be left out.
Alison Mitchell, chair of Islip Parish Council said:
“Due to the distance from the local exchange at Kidlington, our villagers have received extremely slow broadband to date over the existing copper lines.”
“High speed broadband is of critical importance for many residents, and especially people who run…
Selina Moses - 17 January 2013 | comments. Read more
Current communications Minister Ed Vaizey said that broadband upgrades will benefit UK farmers.
He stated in the Farmer’s Guardian of the “big demand” for faster internet in rural communities using the government’s £530 million Rural Broadband Fund.
He said:
“Over the coming months, we will approve the procurement of more than 40 rural broadband programmes.”
As rural areas will gain broadband services and speeds to match the cities, 90 per cent of UK homes and businesses will have super-fast speeds.
The rest will have download speeds of at least 2Mb.
Selina Moses - 14 January 2013 | comments. Read more
George Osbourne has announced a further 12 smaller cities that will share £50m worth of funding for superfast broadband and public Wi-Fi.
The super-connected cities grants were first talked about in the Spring 2012 budget.
This £50m grant follows a £100m grant that was to improve broadband and public Wi-Fi services for ten UK cities.
The aim is to offer speeds of up to 100Mbps for homes and businesses and help economic growth in these places.
Maria Miller, the Culture Secretary said:
“Fast broadband is essential for the growth and creation of jobs.
“The new…
Helen Christie - 6 December 2012 | comments. Read more
The DCMS (Department of Culture Media and Sport) confessed it was unaware of the number of employees working for BDUK (Broadband Delivery).
BDUK authorises around £530m of public money for regional broadband projects that allows all homes to have a connection of at least 2Mbps.
The previous figure of 75 employees has been re-evaluated, with now only 62 people working on the project between July and September this year.
Under Secretary of State, Ed Vaizey highlights the concern that BDUK is considerably exceeding the average staff turnover rates per year (25 percent),…
Selina Moses - 7 November 2012 | comments. Read more
Bracknell Forest Council is pushing the Borough to back the campaign for easy access to superfast broadband that is still lacking in the rural areas.
It is estimated that the area should be fibre-connected by 2015, with Dr Phillip Lee MP supporting the proposal in Parliament.
The Secretary of State Owen Paterson MP spoke about the progress of providing broadband to everyone on Thursday, October 25.
He and the Secretaries of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Maria Miller MP, and Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles MP met to discuss this.
Speedy…
Selina Moses - 5 November 2012 | comments. Read more
Do you know what we al need, asks Neelie Kroes? “Usain Bolt-like internet” speeds, both download and upload. That in fact is Broadbandwatcher’s wishful thinking as well.
According to recent reports, the Vice President for the Digital Agenda scheme underlined that member states should bravely invest in firms which had the potential to deploy superfast broadband, or as she coined it “Usain Bolt Internet”.
Kroes then said that failure to do so would tie Europe down in terms of growth in many spheres such as economy or technology. “We’re at a…
Edita Lozovska - 16 October 2012 | comments. Read more
You might have noticed that Broadbandwatcher has a soft spot for illegal download based stories.
Reports suggested that almost nothing good came out of forcing ISPs to block illegal content downloads facilitating websites seeing as the volume of people clicking on download-me-for-free buttons has only minutely decreased.
Having said that, this is what may happen in the UK, if the three-strike Digital Economy Act (DEA) gets the green light. This particularly glowing example comes from France, where the one-two-three legislation is in full bloom as it claimed its first “illegal” downloader.
In…
Edita Lozovska - 17 September 2012 | comments. Read more
It seems that the UK Government is hungry for topics that it could potentially censor, at least according to recent reports which stated that the Minister of State at the Department of Health has claimed that broadband providers should extend their censorship to websites which glorified suicide or listed ways of how one could take his or her own life.
As a quick reminder, ISPs are expected to block sites that link to illegal content download sources, pornography, hate and extremist sites, therefore it does not surprise Broadbandwatcher that suicide…
Edita Lozovska - 12 September 2012 | comments. Read more
A recent House of Lords report stated that the Government’s broadband funding scheme was simply made to order haute couture for none other than BT, do forgive the high fashion pun.
As a quick reminder, BDUK has set aside £530m to deploy superfast broadband (25Mbps or above) to 90 per cent within every county with the remaining 10 per cent to be left with basic broadband (at least 2Mbps).
It has been stated that because of the regulations that the BDUK had put in place, it was only realistic for major…
Edita Lozovska - 6 August 2012 | comments. Read more
