Those in rural areas need private sector broadband investment

An industry official has recently expressed concern over the digital divide between rural and urban areas in the UK, and has said that consumers and businesses in rural areas need to encourage private sector investment.

For some time now there have been concerns over how consumers and business located in rural areas have experienced problems when it comes to getting adequate access to broadband and internet services. Many people in rural areas have missed out the benefits of high speed broadband because providers simply aren’t able to cost effectively serve these areas with such services in these areas.

One industry official has now expressed his own views about the broadband problems that are being experienced by those that live and work in rural areas, and has said that consumers and businesses that are in these rural areas need to encourage Internet Service Providers from the private sector to invest in high speed broadband in the areas.

The concerns have been expressed by Justin Brown, Head of Economic Regeneration at Lincolnshire County Council. He said that talks had been held with the communications giant BT about investment in high speed broadband, but that whilst the talks had been promising there still needed to be persuasion for private sector ISPs to invest.

Mr Brown said: “Our strategy for improving digital coverage in Lincolnshire includes public sector organisations taking action. However, the main aspects of our strategy are to persuade private digital service providers, such as BT, Virgin Media and Vodafone and the wealth of others, they should invest in Lincolnshire.”

Source – Top 10