Simon’s Blog (the official one)

I was alarmed to hear a piece on the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme this morning. It said that OfCom had reported that broadband uptake in rural areas was now higher than it is in urban areas and that ‘a digital divide’ had been closed. This is so misleading that it beggars belief and will do a lot damage to the efforts of those campaigning for broadband in rural areas.

I think the uptake figures quoted were 59% vs 57%. But, before everyone relaxes and says “job done” – especially those developing policies for Government - I’d like to point out one or two things:

1 Figures are higher in rural areas DESPITE the fact that there are a significant number of people who can’t get it, even though they are desperate for it. I wrote about this earlier – see this true story

2 So DEMAND is a lot higher in rural areas than urban areas but the market cannot supply to all those who want it

3 Why is demand so high? Well, there is a mix of reasons: less of the population is within reach of a public access point; you can’t just walk around the corner to access a service and more and more services (including government ones) are increasingly provided online and, furthermore, realistically, you need broadband to use them.

4 An urban person’s broadband is not the same as a rural person’s broadband. I expect these figures relate to the increasingly inadequate ADSL, telephone-based service. This service will not be considered to be broadband in 2-3 years time. I wonder how the figures would compare if you looked at the higher spec services, the non-ADSL services, the services we’ll all need in the very near future. I can tell you that the rural figure will be near to zero as these services are simply not available.

So please, let’s not take our eye of the rural broadband ball on the basis of a very, very misleading headline from the Today Programme.

Monday, April 28th, 2008
Broadband must be recognised as an essential service

Monday, December 17th, 2007
The trouble with rural broadband

Friday, April 30th, 2004
Rural Broadband - Is BT good for rural communities?