At least the politicians in the UK are now talking about rural broadband, but the cynic in me wonders whether this has more to do with an upcoming election rather than a serious desire to sort out this issue.

Gordon Brown talks about the need to provide “superfast” broadband to all homes in the country while David Cameron talks about putting the UK top of the European broadband league. Admirable sentiments, but unrealistic. Let’s look at Gordon Brown’s statement first – superfast broadband for all – what exactly does he mean by “superfast”, is he talking about the definition of superfast being 50Mbps. Given the inability to delivery these sort of speeds even in densely populated urban areas, how exactly does he suggest that we can achieve these speeds in rural areas where the distance to the nearest exchange can prevent any reliable broadband service from being delivered? This doesn’t even begin to address the fact that broadband speeds are one of the most “flexible”  definitions known to man.

David Cameron has also been talking recently about broadband, and talks ambitiously about putting the UK at the top of the European league for broadband provision, while suggesting that part of the BBC licence fee could be diverted to fill in gas where the market doesn’t work to increase provisions. It seems to be unrealistic to aim for top of the league without having any real understanding as to how you can improve the low speeds that dog most rural communities and will continue to drag down the average that is part of the reason we are so low in the current standings.

Both leaders talk knowingly about the benefits of broadband, about its ability to transform business models, to enable home working, to enable the provision of audio or visual services such as on-demand TV, but neither of them seem to be able to say how much this will cost or how it will be delivered, instead relying on bland statements about markets, encouraging provision etc.

Living in a rural community I am fortunate enough to get a reasonably reliable broadband service, touching 2Mb, not enough to deliver most TV on demand services, but enough for most of my current needs. There are many people who are not this fortunate and have an unreliable service or can’t get broadband at all. Do I expect to get the sort of speeds available in cities? No, of course not and what’s more I don’t even want politicians to start suggesting that I will because quite frankly I don’t believe them when they say that. I personally am willing to accept a 2 tier service, and believe that most rural communities are, but feel that the current provision falls a long way short of what is currently possible.

The problem with delivering rural broadband is well understood; copper wiring over extended distances. That being said, the solution must therefore be to either overcome the problems with copper wires or avoid using them.

If any government is serious about addressing this issue it would do well to “encourage” the deployment of fibre between all BT’s exchanges and their cabinets. The vast majority of rural households and businesses are in all probability closer to a street cabinet than they are to their local exchange. Extending the fibre network to the cabinet will have the effect of reducing the amount of copper wiring involved, and hence should deliver an immediate improvement in broadband speeds for the vast majority or rural homes and businesses.

Where it is not possible to do this, the mobile providers should be looked at to see whether their existing network infrastructure can be used to plug the gaps.

While this well understood process is ongoing, it should then be possible to continue to undertake the research necessary to understand the new technologies that can be brought to bear on delivering high speed broadband services.  

Government should consider encouraging the deployment of fibre/mobile based improvements in the short term via the use of through tax credits and a streamlined planning process and could then support the R&D via an “open-source” model. That is to say that Government could fund the research work into new methods of delivering broadband, and make this research publically available through something like the GNU licence. That way the market can do what it does best; work out how to exploit the technology to deliver chargeable services to as many customers as possible and we can all benefit from improved broadband provision.

And one final word for those who thing that rural broadband isn’t an issue for them, remember the rural communities and businesses are likely to be your customers, suppliers or even both.