Bournemouth is a strange and fusty place. Its manicured Winter Gardens and bandstand concerts with easy listening classics are redolent England that doesn’t really exist anymore. One where Britons holiday in our seaside towns, sport hanky headwear and want nothing more from their two-week sabbatical than a donkey ride. It’s like the last 30 years never happened. Imagine a world without cheap air travel, profuse and profligate spending on credit cards and where our culinary palates never extended far beyond a good fry up and you’re halfway there.
Strange then that this week it was confirmed that Bournemouth is to be home to the only 100Mb broadband service available in the UK, in a stroke dragging the cosy old town kicking and screaming into the future. The Fibrecity scheme is being piloted by H20 Networks and the service will be available initially in 30 homes. As the roll-out advances, availability will be extended and according to local press up to 5,600 residents and businesses have signed up.
In one sense, it’s hard to see why Bournemouth was chosen. Its ageing population are unlikely to be heavy downloaders or keen viewers of online TV who might give the technology a real work out and prove a willing market for 100Mb broadband when H20 start charging for the service.
And yet, in another respect an English seaside town is an ideal choice for the service and a chance to see what kind of impact it has on the local economy. Should businesses move in en masse to take advantage of the connectivity, the advent of the service could be the catalyst for the economy to diversify into a more viable and robust model. Whether this will prove enough to save Bournemouth from the worst excesses of the downturn remains to be seen, but it leaves it in much better stead than much of the rest of the country.
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