News - Rural broadband trials announced

[HEXUS]

Government backs next gen broadband in spending review.

Read more.

[pollaxe]

As a bumpkin, living in rural Herefordshire - on blistering 512 kbps broadband - I'm quite excited by this news.

It still sounds a bit too good to be true though.

edit: I should note that I'm a terrible cynic.
edit2: Actually, I'm a really good cynic, because I'm terribly cynical.
I need more coffee.

[Funkstar]

which will fork out £300m of the £530m cost

Missing 'm'

This is good news, hopefully it means the exchange i'll be about 200m from will get an upgrade sooner rather than later. It will be interesting to see how close I can get to 8mbit when I move in a month.

The rest of the cash will come from the digital switch-over budget, the BBC reported.

If ever you want proof that the media only like bad news, this is it. The budget for digital switch over, which includes subsidised and free boxes, installation and support, has cost £230m less than was budgeted for. Yet all you hear about is when things run over budget. This is a particularly sensible way to spend the excess in my opinion. Again, sensible decisions are never highlighted in the media.

[Flash477]

Bah, nothing for Devon then.

Personally I think that they should do it backwards - concentrate on the rural first and then the cities, as they cities already have decent connections

[miniyazz]

They could be there all day long trying to sort out all the rural areas. Would you draw a line anywhere? Like that one house in Northern Scotland surrounded in all directions by a clear margin of 20 miles (not outside the realms of possibility, although I don't know if it actually exists )

[3dcandy]

Problem with working backwards is that more paying punters live in cities...so more revenue. It's a vicious circle, no broadband means no-one is interested in faster broadband.

[Brewster0101]

Interesting to see BBC and BT kinda joining resources on this.