Better broadband for rural Britain: we’re so well connected

It’s hardly a reverential name for some of the most significant social pioneers in Britain today: “yogurt knitters”. But this is how armies of determined campaigners were dismissed when they set about bringing broadband to the countryside.

For just as it is probably rather tricky to knit yogurt, so sceptics said it would be impossible to connect outlying areas to the internet.

No one accuses them of knitting yogurt now. Instead, they are knitting together far-flung communities by providing villages with customised internet connections. In one village, locals went out with shovels and dug trenches for new fibre-optic cables, enabling every resident to talk to their doctor via video link.

This movement is changing lives, providing a slip road on to the information super highway for rural folk who had faced only road blocks. After all, it is those who live in Britain’s remoter nooks who would benefit most from the internet’s social and commercial possibilities; if you’re off the beaten track, you’ll jump at the chance to go online. More rustics than urbanites use the internet to make transactions, and with public bodies demanding we contact them electronically, the internet is no longer mere luxury. The Commission for Rural Communities even calls it “the fourth utility”.

Remarkable stories telling how small groups of socially concerned individuals have hooked up entire villages to the net come as the Government dithers over providing fast broadband for all of Britain, or whether to leave us divided. Disraeli would recognise the emergence of our two internet nations: one with fast broadband, one without, one part of society, one excluded.

Superficially, all is well. Gordon Brown, in a rather ominous echo of Harold Wilson’s brave talk about “the white heat of the technological revolution”, promises universal broadband by 2012. But just as all that white heat turned out to be hot air, this will be about as fast as a rusty Morris Minor with Miss Marple behind the wheel. Brown has promised two megabits per second, which sounds fine until you hear South Korea plans universal coverage at 500 times the speed. And while the haggling continues, 42 per cent of rural areas don’t even reach Brown’s modest standard. And with 20 per cent of England’s population living in rural areas (more in other nations of the UK), that’s a lot of people.

But it is not all bleak, thanks to a few enterprising rural folk with the initiative to galvanise their communities. Why wait for Whitehall to clunk into life when it has only ever played a slow game of catch-up with the internet? This week I visited South Witham, near Grantham, amid Lincolnshire’s sweeping wheat fields, where one determined woman has transformed her village.

“People tell me they are quite prepared to go without water for a couple of days,” laughs Helen Anderson, “but take away their broadband, and it’s a real crisis.”

An extreme view perhaps, but even if she is only half right then those bringing broadband to outlying areas should be regarded in the same light as the Victorian visionaries who built pipes, sewers and railways. We would not accept rural letters delivered far slower, so why emails? And before country existence is dismissed as a lifestyle choice, many rustics were born in the sticks. They already earn less; are we condemning them to read less? Besides, with fast rural connection, more people could avoid commuting, thereby helping rural economies and the environment. And should you think dial-up a mere minor inconvenience, Anderson takes me to a neighbour, Sarah Barker.

“We couldn’t afford a phone line,” the nurse tells me. “But I was studying for my exams and really needed internet access. It has transformed my life. As well as my studies, my family are spread out and internet has allowed me to talk to my father on Skype and he can now speak to his grandchildren. My husband had never used a computer, but because of the internet he has learnt and gained a lot.”

When she has been unable to pay and had the connection cut off, Anderson has later reconnected her without additional charges.

There are plenty of tales in this village of people having their lives transformed by the internet, from the Microsoft employee who considered moving in search of broadband, to the 79-year-old who has discovered social networking. Best of all, this village activism has helped bind a community, with Anderson and other volunteers teaching the elderly how to log on, or the technically challenged how to download digital photos. The project has spawned a village website, community radio station, frequent parties and even a ball. Spare funds from broadband subscriptions have been spent on computers for the disadvantaged.

It all began in 2004 when Anderson, a former secretary, realised through her role as a parish councillor how isolated some fellow villagers were. She also grew frustrated that her internet connection “was like watching paint dry. But back then, a lot of the village didn’t know what broadband was. I was having a drink one night at the Angel Inn and just thought 'why don’t we set up our own broadband?’”

Well, she reasoned, it’s straightforward to link one computer to another. Why not an entire village and then one village with another? With skilful begging she and a few helpers secured a grant and acquired access to a satellite. As interest grew she threw a “sign-up supper” to see if villagers would actually cough up. Far from finding it difficult to collect subs, Anderson was faced with folk from neighbouring villages brandishing cheques for a year in advance. “Some were so desperate they were in tears. Businesses were particularly keen: you don’t appreciate how many there are tucked away in villages.”

Soon people were making contact from across the district, so as well as 260 homes signed up in the village, she persuaded 100 further afield. Anderson realised her operation was outgrowing her amateurish club. “We needed bank accounts, limited liability and so on, and I wanted to set up a not-for-profit company,” she says. “Our situation cut to the heart of the digital divide.”

Ministers began to take an interest and set up a small fund for community broadband networks. Anderson learnt that other villages had set up similar schemes independently. Soon her project expanded to mentoring internet activists across Britain, while she was fêted at awards ceremonies from Brussels to Vienna and even at a breakfast with Gordon Brown.

But while BT had shown scant interest in settlements miles from the exchange, Anderson began to fear the lazy leviathan would, however languidly, improve its service and put her out of business. To fight back, Anderson upgraded her system and has such a loyal following people beg to remain part of her online network when they move away.

“We thought 'b----- it, we now know as much about broadband as anyone else’, so we decided to sell our service like any other provider.”

But being small-scale, Anderson says scope for profit making is minimal. She seems more interested in the social rather than entrepreneurial possibilities. Still, there must be commercial openings. “BT limits broadband connections to people six kilometres from an exchange, but we’ve had people up to 14km away. And there are lots of such people.”

While BT ensures connection to a house, Anderson’s technicians rummage around inside to set subscribers up online: “We are always here: if someone has a problem, we will try to help. We had an elderly woman yesterday who complained her broadband wasn’t working. It turned out she’d unplugged her computer to do her vacuuming.”

Laudable and ingenious though these local schemes are, they rely on highly motivated, technologically accomplished individuals. Not all rural areas are so blessed. Most experts agree to the principle that broadband should be universal, for hard-headed economic as well as social reasons: 27 per cent of England’s businesses are rural, contributing £300bn to the economy. And businesses follow the bandwidth.

The scale of the communication chasm has been brought home to me over the past fortnight on a tour through the craggy gorges of Wales and Scotland. Colleagues in London were exasperated I couldn’t file an article instantly, but many hotels are without internet, with owners complaining copper telephone connections are so decayed they can barely cope with voice traffic. Even many internet cafés are still on dial-up, and BlackBerry signals are intermittent. Is it any wonder remote corners of Britain are growing estranged from London, when their contact is so limited?

Against that, a compromise that might provide a semi-fast service across the country risks leaving our cities with a slower system than cutting-edge companies demand. It is a thorny dilemma.

Inevitably, the problem is money. Like universal benefits, universal broadband sounds nice, but who pays? The recent report by Lord Carter into Britain’s digital future rather skated over this vulgar question, mooting a 60p a month telephone tax, but there seems little consensus on what budget is needed and to achieve what.

In fairness to the Government, it cannot on its own afford to replace copper cables with fast fibre-optic connections. By some estimates, it would cost about £300 per urban home and £2,000 for rural ones. After years of largesse, minsters are slashing spending deemed peripheral. Yet try squeezing the money out of private providers such as BT and the pips wouldn’t merely squeak, they might stop sounding altogether.

Perhaps the cost should be spread. In Kirriemuir, Scotland, bills are shared between provider and customer, following similar experiments in Sweden. Alston, a village on the Cumbria-Northumberland border, had run its own broadband service similar to South Witham’s. As an example of how so much government spending could have been better directed if left to local people, Alston folk hired village builders to dig trenches and lay fibre-optic cables – at a fraction of the cost of government estimates. (BT quoted £120 per metre, Alston Cybermoor cost £10 per metre by using local contractors and negotiating access over open farmland, and by putting local knowledge and contacts to work.)

Now the NHS is contributing, so every home there will have “telehealth”. These are all patchwork solutions, but if Britain is to become a more devolved country, as most would like, then it might well fall to councils to negotiate deals to serve local communities.

Individuals would also pay something according to the level of service they require, or can afford. The need now is to get going. Alas the Broadband Stakeholder Group, comprising BT and sundry service providers, thinks we can jog along “consulting” for up to a year. BT is naturally rather wary of the word “patchwork”, for it threatens the last vestiges of its former status as a nationalised monopoly.

Ministers, rarely terribly adept at responding to the dynamism of either market or technology, seem happy with the cheapest option of all, more yadder-yadder. The Conservatives, meanwhile, make melodic noises but offer nothing by way of harmonious policy.

One senses this could become highly contentious come the election, judging by the volume of emails on telegraph.co.uk. “One issue constantly flagged to us is broadband access,” says a CRC spokesman. “Ofcom has just found cable customers have much faster speeds. But in villages, cable access is just 1.5 per cent. Inspirational as local schemes are, Government and the industry needs to be involved.” “Involved” is code for “pay”.

So far, no politician has taken “ownership” of the issue as Paddy Ashdown did at the dawn of the internet age. This might change when broadband campaigners complete a map highlighting marginal constituencies with poor connectivity.

Meanwhile, Brown’s plans for the super highway sound suspiciously like improving the efficiency of the horse and trap, a fair pretty time after the invention of the motor car.