Bournemouth pensioners to become 100Mb broadband speed demons

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.

Broadband New Deal - Too Little, Too Late

This week Gordon Brown hinted that the government could be prepared to fund the development of a next-generation broadband network for the UK. It was a move welcomed by ISP’s shareholders, who are fearful of the impact that financing such a network would have on their dividend, and rank and file employees who are fearful for their jobs.

It was also embraced by economists on the grounds that the government is displaying foresight to recognise the importance of a next-gen network to the nation’s economic health and is ensuring the UK’s competitiveness in the global economy in years to come. Prudent Gordon we’re invited to believe is some sort of economic next-gen visionary who sees high-tech industries as the salvation of our economy. You’ll forgive me if I demur.

Surely if this were the case he’d have impressed upon telecomms the importance of a fibre-optic network more vehemently over the past five years. Instead they’ve been offered scant financial incentive to invest and have come under even less in the way of coercive strong arm tactics. The result is that the much-touted roll-out of a fibre optic network has been a total non-event. What’s especially galling is that had they been legally compelled to start committing money to the cause at a time when their incomes were booming it would have been less of a challenge to meet the £30 billion cost of construction.

Instead what’s happened is that we’ve had to wait until the country is on the verge of economic meltdown before any action has been taken. This leaves taxpayers bailing out companies who until recently had been enjoying huge profits from us as a result of the UK broadband boom.

These developments have however left one ISP looking like a shining model of virtue next to its peers. Virgin Media has funded its fibre optic network at huge expense and is now offering 50Mb to over 1.5 million homes with 12.6 million in line for the service by summer this year. In contrast, its larger rival BT, which has repeatedly dragged its heels over committing funding, emerges with its reputation, for me at least, eternally sullied.