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Rural areas consistently losing out on high-speed broadband 
Millions of rural customers are still being denied access to affordable broadband, according to figures published by comparison website moneysupermarket.com. In broadband blackspots where no local loop unbundled (LLU) lines have been installed, rural customers are paying up to £15 more for their broadband per month compared with their city-dwelling counterparts. This is another blow for broadband users in rural areas, who already have to endure much slower connections than those who live in an urban environment.
According to the website 12 million homes are in Tiscali‘s broadband blackspot, costing them an extra £8 a month, and 10 million homes are denied access to AOL‘s LLU lines, meaning they must pay £10 a month on top of the normal rate.
The research comes after a report last month from the telecoms watchdog Oftel and the Countryside Agency, which confirmed that customers living in large cities were far more likely to have access to high-speed ASDL. About 90% of city centres and 52% of suburbs in the UK are connected with ASDL, compared to just 11% of market towns and 6% of villages.
Similarly 70% of urban centres have cable broadband, but only 11% of market towns and 1% of villages.BT is currently extending its ASDL network, aiming for 80% coverage across the UK by the end of the year. However, rural locations will still most likely miss out, since laying ASDL lines in the countryside is deemed uneconomical.
“We have hundreds of relatively small exchanges across the country and it’s very difficult to find a commercially viable way to broadband enable them, but we’re working on it,” said a spokesperson for BT. Meanwhile local MPs are pushing broadband providers to get a move on when it comes to bringing high-speed broadband to rural areas.
2 Comments »Posted by Ellie on July 8th 2008 in AOL, BT Broadband, Broadband, Tiscali
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2 Responses to “Rural areas consistently losing out on high-speed broadband”
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mike m said on 08 Jul 2008 at 11:24 am #
Well, that’s what you get for choosing to live in the countryside. Stick that up your 4×4.
broadband harvey said on 11 Jul 2008 at 1:31 pm #
I live in the middle of nowhere, and as broadband technology has improved, it’s got worse for those in the country – at first 56k was widely available, then broadband was more expensive to us – and now with fibre optic broadband coming in, we can’t get it here at all!