‘Bridge the digital divide to prevent exodus’
FAR BETTER internet signals can help overcome the connectivity blackspots that will otherwise drive younger generations away from countryside communities but only if commercial mobile phone operators are given a better reason to invest, the president of a landowners group said.
Speaking at the Great Yorkshire Show, the head of the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), Tim Breitmeyer, said the lobby group was continuing to put strong pressure on Ofcom and the Government to find a solution to inadequate broadband and mobile phone signals in the hardest to reach places of rural Britain.
Mr Breitmeyer said: “The operators are clearly playing on commercial advantage and nothing else. I can understand that they have shareholders and if they can get away with not putting a mast up because they haven’t got enough customers then I can totally understand that that is a very sensible commercial decision.
“So we have to create a framework and a playing field whereby they can’t do that, and that’s very much our focus at the moment.”
The CLA operated a broadband surgery on its trade stand at the show yesterday afternoon. Show visitors who were struggling to run businesses in the countryside under poor or non-existent connectivity conditions were invited along to meet operators and discuss how their predicament might be addressed.
If the connectivity problems that plague those areas where installing high speed fibre broadband is proving unattractive commercially cannot be remedied, then Mr Breitmeyer warns of a threat to the sustainability of rural communities.
He said: “The younger people in this country know nothing else other than being permanently connected to that instrument (a mobile phone) and therefore if they cannot get a decent signal in that village then they will want to move.
“That generation will automatically move to the urban fringes and that’s got to be bad for communities and growth and for jobs here in Yorkshire.”
He said the CLA’s lobbying efforts had helped bring about the Government’s Universal Service Obligation which provides a legal right to request a broadband connection of at least 10 megabits per second (Mbps) download speed but he fears there are still blackspots that are “never going to get filled”.
“It’s those areas that we have really got to concentrate on so that people can run a rural business without being at a disadvantage from being in the urban areas,” the CLA president said.
“It’s the kind of thing we need to encourage growth and jobs and everything else to continue in rural areas and we will have to look at what all the solutions are.”
Some wireless internet solutions were being brought about by some smaller companies in some rural areas and such technology can be an option for communities that come together to secure a method of paying for the required infrastructure, he said.
“The urban-rural digital divide at the moment is really seriously widening,” he warned.