This is a liveblog of the session on Rural NGA at the NextGen09 conference. About 60 - 70 people in the audience.
Audrey Roy from CRC and the 'Mind the Gap' report
The picture of rural areas as 'chocolate box' idyll inaccurate. There is a divide and it is being made worse by lack of access to broadband
We need to understand the geographical migration of people and how the rural economies are changing and they need help. It's about "Gaps" and "Speed" in rural areas. The reality is we don't have a patchwork.
60% of English pop can get NGA - but they are mostly in urban areas. There are a lot of gaps
Rural areas need to keep up in investment - delays will cost even more in the long run. How do we get the final third to be included. We need to take action now to future proof and rural proof.
Technology touches all our lives and do we want to 'whistle for it' or hang around and wait. "We need to take action and we need to do it now"
Audrey Roy from CRC says investment in rural broadband is essential for an inclusive society #nextgen09
Andy Lister NYnet
Now we are hearing from Andy Lister about NYnet - a 'backwater with 600,000 people in it" [laughter]. There needs to be a business case though.
The cost per capita of porviding service in rural areas is about 4 times those in rural areas. And we are seeing inreasing demand for digitally delivered services.
Andy Lister from NYNet says telcos think North Yorkshire is a backwater with 600,000 people in it #nextgen09
The 'elephant in the room' is state aid and France got round this using the SGEI possibilities of llegislation.
Challenges fro NYnet were how to make it happen in an environment where we have to fight against the state aid issues.
We know that NY public networks spend about £8m - a unified shared network would save £4m
Network needed to be able to support public services and had to be carrier class and scalable. Public sector needed assurance that it would be there longer term.
[Now Andy 'bigging up' NYCC and Yorkshire Forward who he says have been essential partners and supporters'.]
Network is open to other providers - and they have state aid clearance. They went live in 2007.
Now, they have over 700 sites connected to network. Will go up to 1000. Needs to be sustainable and we are now working on NGA to business parks.
There are 140 rural business parks in N Yorks. We see these as vital and they are interested in NGA services.
"It's not about grants - demand aggregation created the business case but then we were able to get grants to make the project happen - so tat we could achieve the social and economic outputs"
Andy Lister, NYNet, saying businesses are inwardly investing to North Yorks because of NGA on business parks #nextgen09
Small community ISPs are able to take advantage of the network. We have thought to get over the silo mentality to nake progress. It's difficult.
We've been criticsed perhaps fairly for not getting out to difficult areas but we need to have a sustainable position before we can go out there.
One issue is that Big service providers don't get this and they struggle with the concept.
"Small communities will die without broadband. Think about having a child doing A-levels without broadband"
Andy Lister, NYNet, asks how could you get your kids through 'A' Levels in a rural community without broadband? #nextgen09
Adrian Wooster on the scale of the problem
Using league tables to show the differences around the country.
Very broad disparity of performance and access - and guess what - rural areas come out worst.
Competition - there's no LLU in many rural areas
[It's not really possible to blog this as it depends so much on the graphics - they'll be available later I think]
Adrian says we need new models to examine and analyse the situation.
Adrian argues that the pattern of investment simply enables operators to compete with Virgin. "No ones really looking outside a very narrow set of geographies.
by brian_condon via Twitpic 11/17/2009 12:42:23 PM