Broadband is brake on rural businesses
A DIGITAL divide between urban and rural areas is making it harder to do business in the countryside, Tees entrepreneurs said today.
Earlier this week, a survey by bt broadband advice website thinkbroadband.com said many rural areas and towns were lagging behind their urban cousins, with internet users in London enjoying speeds nearly twice as fast as some other areas of the UK.
Thinkbroadband said the problem lay mainly in non-cable broadband services, which were affected by the distance from the telephone exchange.
Sally Robinson, owner of Ample Bosom, a lingerie online retailer in Old Byland, near Helmsley, said: “I get on my soapbox about this.”
Her small rural venture had to install a satellite-based broadband system at a cost of £3,500. The cost of running it is £110 per month, although it would be £12.99 in the city, said her son and IT director, Peter Robinson.
“Four of us work here and we have no carbon footprint travelling to our jobs,” said Mrs Robinson.
“The government doesn’t want us using our cars for work, but there has to be something done about this to keep businesses in the country.”
Farmway.co.uk, the online arm of agricultural supply company Farmway, based in Piercebridge near Darlington, also had to stump up £12,000 a year to keep its 70 computer terminals functioning at acceptable speeds.
“It’s a serious concern going forward, as the demand for online sales grows,” said company IT manager Stephen Chambers.
Its website, which sells equine and pet products to mainly rural customers, had been deliberately designed by Stockton-based Visualsoft to work with lower broadband speeds.
Visualsoft director of web development Dean Benson, defended the investment BT had made in improving broadband access for rural areas and said it was up to website designers to ensure websites were fully accessible at lower broadband speeds to rurally based customers.
“Web developers should look at each and every client and design to suit that market, whether it’s a rural products site or an urban fashion site.”
He said new generation 3G mobile technology, which turned a phone into a mini-laptop, would eventually remove restrictions on the internet for rural users, provided a signal was available.
