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Fibre optic Broadband in Suffolk?
Fast Broadband is something that in Suffolk we aspire to, and I often feel as a rural county should be our right. This would to a large degree redress the long standing imbalance of provision of services between city and country. That imbalance sees central funds going to the same inner city deprived areas time and again either because it was the wrong project because the authors did not talk to the recipients about their needs or the population of that inner city failed due to whatever reasons to engage and take ownership of their received projects.
I have blogged abut my frustration with BT Broadband before. However not one that is often guilty of the British disease of moaning and blaming the government,while forgetting they may not have voted, I am doing something about it. This is a Federation of Small Businesses meeting in Stowmarket. A brilliant venue in the middle of Suffolk, which is a surprisingly large county. Being on the periphery in Haverhill many of the meetings in my teaching career necessitated I had to attend the "Big Houses" in Ipswich nearly 45 miles away. By the time I negotiated the poor roads out of Haverhill towards Bury St Edmunds this could take anytime from 45 minutes to an hour and a half depending on the state of the A14.
The meeting this evening has a speaker whose name I vaguely remember to do with some past activities associated with education. I have an interest on top of the purely personal business aspects as member foremost and lately Director of the Teleworking Association (I have blogged previously about its origins, I won't include the link as it can be found in the list to the right of the blog). The talk is about the coming Broadband offering in Suffolk and how it will be made affordable. I won't prejudice my own thoughts for this evening by speculating on the content. I hope to be presently surprised.
PS St David's day today. A friend of mine launches his website today. A pioneer of the fibre-optic industry (not intentional given the subject of this blog just happen to know Chris) and former director a company making fibre-optics in the town, who saw the light choosing work-life balance and is now a photographic artist (sounds better than a photographer who might only do passport photographs). His exhibition at Haverhill Arts centre takes place on the 1 st April 2011. I wish him well in this new career!
I attended the above mentioned meeting and found the presentation thought provoking for the way that rural Suffolk could join the 21st Century working culture. Suffolk does suffer from the fact that it is a clustered population. Take the large towns out of the picture and the population density coupled with distance from the A14 and A12 broadband may not now appear to be commercially viable for some providers (or their threshold of commercial advantage) but we have not seen the best yet of the generation that has been brought up using computers in Suffolk schools. A little risk taking on the part of the companies that have made huge profits from unbundling of exchanges (my own personal opinion) now will reap benefits when these youngsters set their own businesses up in 5+ years time. Time to move away from concentrating all the infrastructure within the M25!!!
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