rural isolation

Rural UK pays 76% more for worse broadband

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Here is a bit more grist to the poor rural connectivity mill we all know about. This article tells us:

Broadband Savvy has released the results of a study into the cost and performance of UK broadband in different geographies, conducted by OnePoll. The study compared broadband speeds paid for and received by consumers across the country, and how much people pay for their home broadband.

The survey revealed that rural households pay 76 per cent more for broadband compared to those in urban locations. In towns and city fringes, broadband costs 22 per cent more on average than it does in urban centres.

Rural households are also more likely to receive slower broadband speeds than what they pay for, compared to those in cities. People living in urban areas receive speeds 3 per cent slower than what they pay for on average, while the figure is 19 per cent in suburban neighbourhoods. Those living in the rural UK receive speeds 28 per cent slower on average than the advertised typical download speed.

“We expected rural broadband to cost more than in other parts of the UK, but not by this much,” said Tom Paton, founder of Broadband Savvy. “It’s not just that the quoted prices are higher in rural areas – we also found that ISPs often deliver slower speeds than what they promise consumers who live in the countryside. This reflects decades of infrastructure failings – the ancient copper cabling that many rural households rely on simply isn’t capable of providing a quality, consistent broadband connection.”

By region, the North East, Northern Ireland, and Scotland have the UK’s most expensive broadband, paying £0.58, £0.51, and £0.46 respectively per megabit of download speed received. By contrast, London, Wales, and the South East have the cheapest broadband, at £0.23, £0.28, and £0.35 respectively.

Norfolk: Actor Ashton Owen’s one-man show reflects on rural racism

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Pleased to see this story – rural areas needs to stay alive to the challenge of racism

A man who suffered racist abuse as a child has written a one-man show about his experiences of growing up as a mixed-race person in rural England.

Ashton Owen, 25, will perform his show, titled Outskirts, at Sheringham Little Theatre in north Norfolk.

It will premiere virtually on 22 March and Mr Owen will play more than a dozen characters from his childhood.

He said: “I hope the play gets people to think about what they say and do and how it impacts on people of colour.”

The performance is part of the theatre’s Rewriting Rural Racism project, being led by young performers in light of the Black Lives Matter movement and its rise to prominence after the death of George Floyd in the United States last year.

Mr Owen, whose father is of Jamaican heritage, said: “We are trying to make people more aware of issues faced by people living in rural areas, by highlighting real experiences, so they realise it happens here as well as the United States.”

Elon Musk’s Starlink gives “amazing” broadband to UK villages

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This is a space age story with the prospect of superfast broadband through another medium for rural areas. It tells us:

People in rural areas of the UK have revealed what it is like to use Elon Musk’s satellite broadband service after struggling with poor connectivity.

Musk’s SpaceX company has already launched more than 1,000 satellites into Earth’s orbit as part of its Starlink programme, which aims to beam high-speed internet to those left behind by traditional cable-based providers.

But this is just the beginning of the project – Musk reportedly wants to have tens of thousands of his satellites in space eventually, enabling a seamless connection for all users.

Early testing of Starlink was recently opened up to UK residents desperate for a better connection in certain parts of the country, while other areas have been told to expect coverage arriving sometime in mid to late 2021.

Aaron Wilkes, who lives in Bredgar, Kent, told the PA news agency his household’s fixed line should achieve about 20 megabits per second (Mbps) – significantly less than the 71.8Mbps national average reported by Ofcom for May 2020 – but he said the service often lagged between 0.5 and 1Mbps. Such speeds made it almost impossible to stream Netflix or download large video games.

“The ability to be able to download content so quickly compared to our standard BT line is amazing,” said Wilkes.

However, it does not come cheap, at £439 for the hardware and a monthly cost of £89. Plus, there are planned outages due to the limited number of satellites and the fact that Starlink is still in early testing. But those who have suffered with sluggish internet say it is a price worth paying.

UK’s rural stores providing lifeline for isolated communities

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This is an important contribution to the discussion about the sustainability of rural communities. It tells us:

Rural shops are the future and the government needs to support them, the Association of Convenience Stores said at the launch of its Rural Shop Report today (23 February).

The report reveals that throughout 2020, rural consumers have increasingly used their local shop for a wider range of products, and one in five reporting that they depend on their local shop more now than a year ago.

More than a third of the UK convenience sector is made up of rural shops and between them they employ more than 126,000 people.

The report reveals that rural shop owners have invested more than £197m in their businesses over the past year and 21% now provide a home delivery service in their local area.

In addition, the report shows that 79% of rural shops are actively engaged in their communities, with 42% making donations to a local food bank over the past year.

ACS chief executive, James Lowman, said: “Rural shops have been absolutely essential to their communities over the last year, helping customers to shop safely and putting in place new services like home delivery to support those who aren’t able to get out to stores. The message from this year’s report is that rural shops have become even more important during the Covid pandemic, retailers now have even closer relationship with their customers, are employing more people, are taking part in even more community activity, and offer a range of wider and more powerful range of services than ever. These businesses have been crucial at a time when more people are feeling isolated due to the pandemic.”

Rural areas face slow broadband for years, MPs warn

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A depressingly commonly refrain – often quoted in Hinterland over the last decade. This article tells us:

Thousands of farmers could be left with slow broadband for years to come because of a “litany of failures” by government to roll out ultrafast technology to rural areas, according to a group of MPs.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said people living in rural areas “risk being left even further behind” if the government fails to raise its game on rural connectivity.

The warning comes after the UK government revised down its target to deliver nationwide “gigabit” broadband connectivity by 2025 from 100% to 85% of the country.

And its National Infrastructure Strategy does not state a target date for when it expects every home to have access to a 1Gbps-capable connection.

Between 2021 and 2025, the government has committed £1.2bn of the programme’s original £5bn budget, pledged in its 2019 election manifesto, to “subsidise the rollout of gigabit-capable broadband… to the hardest-to-reach areas”. There are no details on how and when the remaining £3.8bn will be allocated.

More than 95% of UK premises now have access to fast broadband speeds of at least 30Mbps, according to Ofcom. But about 1.6m premises, mainly in rural areas, can’t yet access fast speeds. Every home in the UK now has a legal right to internet speeds of a minimum of 10Mbps.

Barry Forde – CEO of Pioneering Rural FTTP ISP B4RN to Retire

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Very sad to see Barry a pioneer of rural local broadband planning to hang up his boots!

The founder and CEO of UK rural “full fibre” broadband ISP B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North), Barry Forde MBE, has this morning announced that he intends to retire by the end of this year. The provider’s Board is currently overseeing the ongoing process of appointing a successor.

The provider, which has been busy building a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to rural homes since 2012, is registered as a Community Benefit Society (i.e. it can’t be bought by a commercial operator and profits are distributed back into the community) and can reach into some very remote parts of Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumbria, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Yorkshire.

B4RN is also partly funded by local communities, which volunteer their time and exchange free wayleaves (e.g. access over farm land) in order to help physically build the new fibre infrastructure (volunteers on soft digs through fields etc.). As a result, their full fibre network has been able to reach into locations where it might otherwise have been considered too expensive for a normal commercial operator.

City dwellers idealise Britain’s countryside, but there’s no escaping rural poverty

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Any one who thinks urban places have a monopoly on disadvantage should read this article. It tells us:

A paper by the Cardiff University geographer Andrew Williams and colleagues offers a reality check, pointing out that austerity did not bypass rural England and Wales. It too has seen big cuts to public infrastructure and services. Rural housing has its own affordability crisis. Poverty, so often imagined solely as an urban affliction, thrives, though often hidden, amid the pretty market towns and rolling green fields.

The disconnectedness of rural living may be part of its charm but it is also a driver of inequality, the paper points out. Almost no one in urban areas lives more than 4km (2.5 miles) from a GP – one in five households in rural areas do. It is the same for supermarkets: 44% of country dwellers have to travel more than 4km to get to one, while 59% are not within 4km of a bank. Public transport has been decimated – if you don’t have a car, good luck.

The closure of Sure Start children centres, jobcentres and youth clubs has exacerbated the access problem. Of 605 libraries closed in England since 2010, 150 were in rural areas. They were more likely to be rescued by volunteers in urban areas, Williams points out, “suggesting that the ‘rural’ is not quite the ‘ideal laboratory’ for community-run public services that it is made out to be by proponents of the big society.”

One way rural local authorities have sought to mitigate the cuts enforced on them by central government is by “switching” services such as public toilets and parks to the care of parish and town councils, who raise local taxes to pay for them. Not a problem for wealthy villagers but hardly fair to those who are less well off, who are in effect taxed twice at a time when their incomes have been shrinking as a result of welfare cuts.

Many rural economies are weak, even in the prettiest, chocolate boxy parts. Low wages and casual labour are rife, and the rural premium on fuel and food is eye-watering. Households in rural hamlets with a car spend an average £139 a week on transport, compared with £79 in urban areas. More than 40% of households in rural Wales live in fuel poverty, says Williams, compared with 22% in urban areas. Similarly, people in isolated rural areas spend an average £71 a week on food, compared with £61 in cities.

Ofcom Probes BT Charges For Rural Broadband Connections

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I think this sort of scrutiny is long overdue!

The British communications regulator Ofcom has confirmed it has begun an investigation of BT and its charges to install or upgrade rural broadband connections.

According to the Guardian newspaper, the investigation over whether BT is overcharging for connections comes after reports of people receiving quotes as high as £100,000.

At the moment, Openreach (which runs most of the UK’s broadband network), has a legal obligation (the universal service obligation’ or USO) to ensure that homes in the UK receive a minimum speed of 10Mbps.

MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) have previously warned the government is not doing enough to tackle the digital divide between rural and urban areas,

The 10Mbps goal is deemed to be the minimum for modern internet requirements such as watching Netflix or playing Fortnite and other online games.

BT must bear the cost, up to a maximum of £3,400 of meeting this USO.

But in extremely rural areas, the cost of getting a viable broadband connection can be higher….much much higher.

In such cases BT will still connect a property with broadband if the consumer is willing to pay the excess amount assessed by the carrier.

The Guardian newspaper highlighted a number of cases where BT reportedly demanded huge connection charges.

In one case, a customer in High Peak, Cheshire, was quoted £100,000 to upgrade. Another, in Woodbridge, Suffolk, was quoted £70,000 to connect to 10Mbps broadband.

FLY-TIPPING, theft and trespass are among the rural crimes facing rural people in Hampshire, a new survey has revealed.

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This article gives me substantial pause for thought in the way it reveals a lukewarm response to rural crime, it tells us:

Crime has always been a key issue throughout the countryside, but this has only risen up the national agenda over the last few years, thanks to a growing awareness of the problems rural communities are facing. However, this increased awareness is often not felt by the communities that live and work in the countryside, with 98 per cent of Hampshire respondents feeling that rural crime has a significant impact in their community, according to the survey carried out by the Countryside Alliance.

The extent of crime in rural areas is only part of the problem. For many people, whether they have fallen victim to crime or not, the simple fear of crime can have as great a detrimental effect on their quality of life as the actual experience of crime itself. The effect of long-term emotional stress, loss of confidence – particularly among young people, families and farmers – should not be underestimated. This fear of crime is also exacerbated by rural isolation.

The crimes which were recorded as the most frequently committed in rural areas, include fly-tipping, agricultural machinery theft and trespass, with respondents wanting the police to prioritise tackling these crimes.

Nationally, there is a serious problem of crime being underreported in rural areas, with more than one in four not reporting the last crime they were a victim of.

Those surveyed felt it was either a waste of time to report it or that the police would not be able to do anything and 47 per cent of people don’t think the police take rural crime seriously, while 57 per cent of people don’t think rural policing has improved since Police and Crime Commissioners were introduced in 2012.

The implication of these findings is that the rural population is putting up with the crime they experience and making do as best they can, the alliance says.

Sarah Lee, head of policy at the Countryside Alliance said: “Good rural policing is about far more than numbers of police officers on the ground. If we truly want to tackle rural crime, then we must form effective partnerships between the police, rural communities and other authorities to ensure that the needs of our rural communities are truly understood so that the availability of services matches those needs.”

Children in remote areas ‘face insecurity due to lack of transport and internet’

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Andy Bell gave the development of this report a preview last week at the Parliamentary Inquiry into Rural Health and Care. We usually equate challenges for older people with living in rural England. This report reminds us that there is at least one other group with pressing challenges. 

Lack of access to public transport and the internet is leaving children in remote, rural communities facing “prolonged isolation, exclusion and insecurity”, a report warns.

Children in remote rural and coastal communities “have been overlooked for too long”, according to the Centre for Mental Health.

Its report, funded by BBC Children in Need, found that eight to 13-year-olds are struggling to get mental health support because of poor transport, digital connectivity and a lack of safe spaces to meet.

We need to take action now to ensure no child’s mental health is put at risk because of where they live.

Rural areas often appear to be “poorly served” by specialist services, the report entitled The Space Between Us found.

It is calling for more funding for local councils to invest in digital infrastructure for places with limited connectivity, to develop peer support services and invest in parks, schools and community centres.

Centre for Mental Health deputy chief executive Andy Bell said: “Children in remote rural and coastal communities have been overlooked for too long.

“While rural life can be good for mental health, children growing up in poverty, with disability or in a marginalised or oppressed community face a high risk of poor mental health with little support close to home.

“Without access to public transport or digital connection, children face prolonged isolation, exclusion and insecurity.

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