The land that broadband forgot

May 9th, 2009

Digital Britain? Digital Schmigital

Lyddington in Rutland is part of the land that Digital Britain forgot: big telecoms firms have refused to lay fibre optic cable to it that would give it high-speed broadband. So its 400 residents have clubbed together, raised £25,000, and loaned the money to Rutland Telecom, which will install it later this summer. Now there are plans to introduce the technology to more isolated villages in the area.

The lack of broadband in rural communities is becoming a growing economic issue. Last month communications minister Lord Carter suggested there was “certainly 25-30% of the country where there will be no economic case for building a next-generation fixed network”.

Sounds familiar to a story on the other side of the Atlantic – I called the battle for Lafayette

Today’s world is about the speed and reach of commerce,

and the speed of information and knowledge exchange.

To slow this down slows down the economic potential and growth of

cities, towns, regions

and

even countries.

In Lafayette the municipality were told by the telecoms companies that fast internet speeds would not be available for the next 10 years. So America was paying for inferior services at high costs. Who benefits? well of course the telecoms companies do in profits.

So lets get this right, we agree, that for the UK and even the US we no longer have an industrial powerhouse that builds our GDP’s, so we are going to have to build a robust knowledge economy. But we don’t have the tools to do it properly.

Back Lafayette, like every other city that has grown tired of undelivered promises of building a super-information highway, there attempts to go it alone has had the telecoms companies using their gigantatism to block these attempts by citing the “unfair competition from the municipality.”

Lafayette had an outward migration of young people losing the opportunity to retain them, and to attract small business enterprise – who wanted to be internet enabled.

Lafayette municipality believed high speed connection should be available to all, Bell South and Cox Communication disagreed.

Having been told that Lafayette would have to wait a decade of more, the decision was made, that if the community did not do it, then the community would not get it.

Voters in Lafayette, La., on Saturday approved a bond offering to fund a citywide fiber-optic project, an issue that was the source of considerable friction during the past year.
Voters approved the measure 12,290 to 7,507, or 62 percent to 38 percent, according to the Lafayette Daily Advertiser.
The city of 116,000 residents known for its vibrant Cajun culture has been planning to build its own fiber-optic network for more than a year. But local phone company BellSouth and cable operator Cox Communications challenged the city-owned utility, which plans to build and operate the network. After a legal tussle earlier this year, a special election was called to decide whether the city could issue $125 million worth of bonds to fund the project.

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