Broadband Internet AccessbyIn any case, when asked whether broadband should be made available to anyone who wants it as part of a universal service obligation, e-minister Stephen Timms said that the Government has considered it, but come to the decision that it's not yet justified. One wonders what the Department of Trade and Industry's rural broadband team will actually do. Would they have been any help getting Lincolnshire its £7-million of EU money for broadband? There's been a fair amount of rainbow-chasing over the past few years, with promises of satellite links etc. Anyone remember InternetHyperGate? Actually up and running is wireless service Liberty Broadband (formerly Tele2-UK), for users in the Leicester area. It's a shame they don't use the Waltham TV mast to provide access for our area. There are enough interested "internauts" to set up a Campaign for Broadband in neighbouring South Witham. Other villages in the area are encouraged to join them, and there's a poster outside Wymondham Post Office at the moment. The link above might last a little longer... The South Witham people are to be commended for their investigations of the possibilities. From my point of view, regular visits to TheRegister make for frustratingly predictable reading about rural broadband (search for rural, using the box near top-left of TheRegister's page). However, South Witham might've found a workable and affordable solution through Stamford company WRBB - Wireless Rural Broad Band. WRBB's pricing starts at £10 with no ongoing commitment. This promises 54Mb/s throughput (I think that's about 4.9MB/s) and 1GB data transfer per month. It's priced on data transfer, not online time, and any unused allocation is rolled over. Those interested should investigate further through the South Witham site. There'll be a meeting with WRBB on Tuesday 17th June, 7pm at South Witham Village Hall. Uses for broadband include: • Streaming media -- the BBC has its current radio broadcasts and most of the previous week's output available, but it's a jerky listening experience if you're browsing other sites at the same time. On a local level, we could have a "virtual tour" of the village; recordings of oral history etc. • Video conferencing and internet telephony, just like in Thunderbirds! Bear in mind the person "at the other end" also needs a broadband connection and you may develop online habits and expectations completely at variance with less developed regions. • General downloading and email -- the kind of office worker TheRegister calls a "PR Bunny" sends 5MB email attachments. This is unforgiveable to those of us who regard HTML format email as de facto spam, yet occasionally even I need to send an uncompressed TIF image to a photographer friend (generally it's better to upload the file to your webspace, but it could still take 15 - 30 minutes using normal dialup). Downloads of major Linux distributions are only feasible for those with fast connections. Luckily, the CD-R versions can be bought and sent for peanuts, and those of us with old PCs use the tiny distros. • Online gaming. Whatever happened to "jumpers for goalposts"? • File sharing. Using specialized peer-to-peer software such as WinMX or Shareaza, this is the way MP3 music files are most easily found. At standard compression levels MP3s take about 1MB of storage space and up to five minutes to download each minute's-worth of playback, using normal dialup. The "digital divide" used to mean those without any Net access at all. Now it refers to those using standard dialup access. Having broadband capability would make more content available, depending on the capabilities of your machine. I don't know that there actually IS much compelling broadband content out there! Information-rich pages produced by non-commercial sites are what interest me. For the general or new Net user, broadband may simplify matters in that anything you click on will "work". As with road building, congestion is liable to follow provision. I use elderly computer gear and strive to provide lean pages at this site which will be readable in almost all circumstances. I myself use sites such as the text-only version of BBC News and the Opera web browser with its simple control of image loading, pop-ups and page styles to speed up MY use of the Web. Other techniques include the use of a download manager to retrieve webpages for offline reading. I also save streamed media for offline listening. All in all, by using some non-standard solutions, I can certainly survive without broadband. However, the WRBB offering is attractively priced compared to my current flat-rate account, and wireless access has other advantages: speed, no time restrictions, no use of the `phone-line. To be provided in this area will require a nucleus of support, and the South Witham group are the catalyst for that. Regards, Jake WebCobbler to Wymondham Respond to this message Goto Forum Home
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