Broadband out in the sticks is something of a sticking point; we’ve seen Wispa’s campaign heating up over the last few days and B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) has launched an community project to get a 1Gbps network under the soil.
Now BritORA (British Online Retailing Association) has launched the Campaign for Rural Broadband.
The Campaign is focussed on increasing awareness of slow speeds out beyond the suburbs, and is lobbying for investment in rural hubs as well.
Launching its campaign over the weekend in Cumbria BT’s Managing Director Bill Murphy and BritORA’s Executive Director Adrian Quine joined with local MP Rory Stewart and said:
“We understand what an essential tool broadband is for businesses, both in town and country. We welcome the government’s commitment of £530 million of public funds towards this objective but we need to ensure that all areas benefit, not just those with the largest populations.”
UK Broadband: 2Mbps for all by 2015
The UK Government is committed to providing basic speeds of up to 2Mbps for everyone by 2015. This will be achieved by a combination of fibre optic connections and 4G mobile/cellular broadband.
BT’s recent rollout of fibre optic broadband connections will see two thirds of the UK getting speeds of up to 80Mbps by 2015.
Those with a Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) connection which currently provides top speeds of 76Mbps will need to upgrade to Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH), which replaces the copper ‘last mile’ with a fibre line, seeing speeds jumping to over 100Mbps, with a 300Mbps upgrade planned. So in theory, if every customer with FTTC cable upgrades, then two thirds of the UK should have 300Mbps broadband by 2015.
Though two-thirds of the UK will be covered by this rollout, the majority of these areas are in heavily populated urban locations – our regular #bbrolloutroundup feature tracks which exchanges are due for fibre upgrades from BT next.
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