The Government has announced that it wants the UK to have the best broadband network in Europe by 2015, which means the East Riding of Yorkshire could see super-fast Broadband rolled out to many places where the existing service is slow and unreliable.... But to achieve this we need your help.The East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) has the opportunity to bid for Government funding to secure a better service but needs evidence to show how current broadband is working for both businesses and individuals. A project has been established led by the Council to develop a Local Broadband Plan, detailing how investment in the broadband infrastructure will benefit the area and where that investment should be prioritised. The plan is expected to seek approval from the Councils Cabinet late in the summer.
To assist the development of the Local Broadband Plan, the Council has developed a dedicated web site to enable residents and the business sector to register their interest in getting a better broadband service. As well as seeking opinion how an improved service will benefit them the site allows current users to carry out a broadband speed test on their own connection and this will identify to the Council where internet 'slow spots' exist across East Riding to focus any investment as accurately as possible.
The site will be available between February and October 2012 and can be found at http://broadband.eastriding.gov.uk/
I would ask all East Riding readers to offer support for this project which has the potential to have a significant impact on the growth of our local economy and ensure all residents have the best possible access to internet services. To register your interest will ensure the Local Broadband Plan reflects the broadband provision across the East Riding area as accurately as possible.
6 comments:
The speed of broadband around here is heavily dependent upon the time of day. The off peak load is normally satisfactory but when the young get home from school until late evening it slows right down. This suggest to me that people within reasonable distance of the telephone exchange the problem lies in the exchange equipment and the communication links upstream. Progress is not to be denied of course but for those who are currently satisfied at off peak times there doesn't seem a lot of gain in putting new fibre optic links to every house and tearing up our streets again.
Better late than never I suppose! Hasn't there been government funding for improving rural broadband available for some time? ERYC is one of the worst areas in the country for lacking superfast broadband. We normally struggle along on 0.5Mbps (no obvious variation with time of day) Today is a good day - actually got 0.74Mbps download 0.33Mbps upload. Not a hope of watching news or TV programs that you've missed online!
Re village resident
So you would prefer that the young do not get the chance to be able to do their homework online with a reasonable broadband speed?! You may be lucky enough to be able to choose when you go on line, but people who are out at work all day and children who are at school are only able to go online in the evening. Surely a short period of distruption to the streets is a small price to pay for enabling our young people to be able to get their homework done more efficiently? And you are of course assuming that the superfast broadband will be by fibreoptic cable - there are alternative ways of now providing broadband, particularly to remote communities that do not need the streets digging up.
Broadband speed in Spaldington is never satisfactory!! If you can get BB at all, 500kbs is about the best you will see and that's on a good day, mostly the speed lurks around 128kbs. Time of day has very little influence on BB speed here.
We'd appreciate catching up and just getting high speed BB, never mind Super-fast!! But we can always dream.
I get reasonable speeds for what I need most of the time. As remarked by village resident there is a congestion slowdown at times but since I get a free broadband package I don't see a major problem. Continuous normal speed would be nice if it doesn't come at a cost.
Thank you Paul for bringing to our attention an issue which could have a huge impact on the working lives of everyone in rural East Yorkshire. Just think how much more efficient anything which needs to be researched, sold, sent etc via the internet will be if we get just a 10 fold increase in broadband speed from the current 1Mbps to 10Mbps?! Never mind superfast; just get us to fast!
I am however both concerned and sceptical of ERYCs committment to this project. Why have ERYC not notified all parishes of this project? They inundate parish clerks with notifications of meetings, consultations (housing, waste, minerals extraction), marine plans etc etc, much of which is of no relevance; yet the one factor which could affect every single person in the region, they do not even bother to inform us. Dare I suggest this is because a low response to this survey will give them an excuse not to do anything as "not enough people are interested"?? Also have they considered how biased they are making this survey - what about those who do not yet have internet access? How can they respond to an online consultation?!
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