Helping your business to do more business
Monday, 11 June 2012
A couple of days ago I was dismayed to come across reports about an MP who was suggesting that investment in superfast rural broadband wasn't needed (see here), that the money being spent in his county would be better spent on urban infrastructure. Given that his constituency is mostly urban it is perhaps an understandable, if mistaken point of view.
His comments though are almost offensive, he states that only 'rich' people live in the country. Supposedly he's talking about wealthly retirees and business people who've moved out of suburbia, he claims that these people won't create jobs in the rural community and so investing in superfast broadband is wrong.
What utter nonsense! I've lived in rural Devon all my life, on the same farm, my children go to the same schools that I went to. Yes, there are wealthy people, both retirees and others, who have moved into the area. But there are just as many people in my community who can't be considered to be wealthy. They might be working the farms, running (or staffing) the pubs and hotels (tourism is after all an important industry here), or perhaps running their own small businesses.
One thing is for sure, almost everybody will have an internet connection and will be using it for a variety of reasons. It might be for doing the weekly shopping, or buying other things so that they don't have to use the car to travel into town as often (which can be quite a saving in these days of high fuel costs). They'll also be using it to communicate via email, messenger or voice-over-IP (such as Skype). While children will be using it to help with their homework, stay in touch with their friends (what teenager isn't on facebook), and to play games (OK, some adults will do that to).
Several, myself included will be running businesses where having a fast broadband connection is critical! These businesses may be running online shops, or have a simple 'brochure' web site, and they will certainly be using email to communicate with their customers. Some will also be using online backup services, for which fast broadband is essential. While others will need it just to run their businesses, for instance more and more farm paperwork is being required to be done online. Let's also not forget the convenience of being able to work from home, which fast broadband enables.
Technology is also moving forwards, with more and more services being cloud based, which means that a fast connection is required to shunt this data around. Many already have their photos stored in the 'cloud' and some also have their music stored there so that they can be easily shared amongst different devices. But that means that we need fast broadband both for our landlines and our mobiles, and since 3G technology hasn't reached where I live I have little hope that 4G will once it becomes available.
Our local village school struggles to get an internet connection of 0.5Mbps which it must share between 4 teachers and 60 pupils. The reason for this is because of the distance to the local telephone exchange, and at this stage there's no guarantee that the broadband investment will help. While villagers living a few hundred yards from the school can't get a broadband connection at all, with no 3G signal it's no use looking to mobile technology to solve this problem and there are no affordable alternatives. At which point only the 'wealthy' can afford a fast connection as they can look to satellite technologies.
So I couldn't disagree more with what this MP has said! His comments are on the verge of being discriminatory and bigoted and they certainly manage to exclude a large portion of my local community (and most of my friends). We all deserve the same access to the same services, they are obviously easier and cheaper to be provided to those living in towns thanks to economies of scale. But we are using the internet not only to support jobs (thanks to online purchasing etc.) a few of us are also trying to create them, and as such it's only right that we get the same opportunities!