Internet access for Whitby and rural Yorkshire is a national infrastructure priority – GP Taylor
This personal testimony provides more grist to a well worn Hinterland mill. I quote it as a reminder that there are millions of personal testimonies of relevance in the debate about naff broadband in rural areas rather than just a general “moan”!
The annoying thing for me is that I can actually see the telephone exchange from my house and yet the four-week wait for connection turned into eight, even though the previous owners had telephone and internet.
Three years later, the problem is getting worse. Slow speeds and drop outs happen every day. As a writer working from home, this can be very annoying if you have an eleven o’clock deadline and the service goes down in central Whitby.
It is a shame that so many areas of our county fall into areas that even the Government admits are forgotten and neglected. Statistics from
Ofcom showed that while broadband in urban areas of England has an average speed of 35.3Mb, in rural areas that speed is just 17.5Mb. That’s not enough to provide any business or householder with a decent connection.
Few users over a wide area are not financially attractive to the internet line providers, due to the economic challenges of building expensive new networks.
The Government’s gigabit voucher scheme allows individuals and groups in rural areas to apply for money to get them connected to broadband, which according to Digital Minister Matt Warman still has £70m “there for the taking”.
Having looked at the scheme, it is very complicated and needs to be clearer and more widely advertised. The money would be better allocated if it was just given to the line providers with the demand that every rural home is connected by 2025.
It is important that connections should be hard wired and not supplied through 5g wifi. What Yorkshire doesn’t need is more electronic smog covering the countryside. We are still in early days in our understanding of electro-magnetic fields (EMF) and their effect on the human body.
In the race to get better rural and urban internet connection, it is important to take into consideration what the effects of new technologies can have on individuals and the environment.