Plea for rural broadband ; Letters

Siobhan Prideaux's article 'Superfast broadband blow for ruralareas' (Bath Chronicle, November 17) points to the problem faced bycommunities on the edge of Bath, which face the risk of beingexcluded from the national roll-out of superfast broadband under theGovernment's Broadband Delivery UK programme.

The principle reason for this would appear to be that, even whena rural council funds a generous top-up, it may still not be enoughto pay for the upgrade of all the small exchanges and special casesthat make up the final 15 per cent to reach national coverage.

As Bath and North East Somerset Council appears to have workedout, the Government's formula may not be economically attractivebecause a high proportion of the B&NES population has already beenupgraded by commercial companies, and its remaining rural areas maybe too small and fragmented to justify the Government's 'bigcontract' solution.

The parish of Winsley shares the same problem as Claverton, beingon the edge of Bath and having people who urgently need a reliablebroadband service to work and run their businesses from home.

In Winsley's case, there is the added difficulty in that itstelephone services are split between two exchanges: the Bradford 86exchange and the Limpley Stoke 72 exchange. The Bradford exchangewas upgraded by BT several months ago but BT has no plans to upgradeLimpley Stoke. Not only is Winsley split, the Limpley Stoke exchangeserves parishes split by the River Avon, and between Wiltshire andB&NES.

While the maximum speed provided by Limpley Stoke is around sixmegabytes, the actual speed by the time the signal has gone down tothe river and up Winsley Hill may reduce to about 2.5 megabytes atnight, and lower and more variable during the day.

Those professional and entrepreneurial men and women and theirfamilies, who have been attracted to settle in the small ruralcommunities that surround Bath, have much to contribute to ourfuture economic well-being. That is why we need our senior councilsto address the problem posed by these small obsolete exchanges thaturgently need to be upgraded with superfast broadband.

PHILIP POULSOM Councillor, Winsley Parish Council Bradford onAvon