Crap broadband holds back HALF of rural small biz types

Patchy connectivity in rural areas is hampering small businesses with half complaining of poor broadband speeds, according to an extensive survey from the Federation of Small Businesses. In contrast just 28 per cent of their urban small biz counterparts reported broadband issues, according to nearly 1,500 responses. …

[Anonymous Coward]

Pity the poor rural business

"We risk seeing the emergence of a two-speed online economy resulting from poor rural broadband infrastructure."

Given that there are 3x as many urban SMEs as rural, and these urban businesses employ 7x as many people and generate over 10x the turnover, any logical analysis would conclude that the focus should be on the quarter to a third of urban SME's with broadband problems, rather than the rural tiddlers who (presumably) hope for the rest of society to pay for urban utilities to be expanded to the countryside?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pity the poor rural business

Well thought out.

Enjoy your "made in the city" milk and your "roof top garden" lamb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pity the poor rural business

"Enjoy your "made in the city" milk and your "roof top garden" lamb."

I see from the downvotes that the smock-wearing, pitchfork wielding mob are out to day. If you can imagine me mooning at the lot of you, then you will appreciate the high regard I have for you. Of course, whilst I can upload a high res image of Ledswinger's Moonrise fairly quickly on my fat cable pipe, I suppose it could clog your 57k dial up for quite a while, so (being a caring chap), if you can imagine it we'll all be happy.

But back to the point that the downvoters can't understand, maths. Far more urban workers are inconvenienced by broadband woes than rural ones. If you're putting resource into fixing SME broadband problems, then the urban scenario trumps the rural one many times over, even at the same cost. Factor in the costs of fixing rural broadband, the the economic answer is "move to the town".

I remains, sirs, sympathetically yours, etc etc

Bwahahahhahahahahahahahahaha!

[James Hughes 1]

Re: Pity the poor rural business

I don't wear a smock, or carry a pitchfork.

But I do live in a rural location, because I couldn't afford to live closer to work.

Within 10 miles of me I have a large windfarm, supplying you power, some world class companies supplying you food, sheds, play areas, a CFC disposal yard, friends who supply large amount of lamb for you to eat, huge amounts of potatoes for you to convert to chips, companies that supply computer equipment worldwide, a large biodigestor under construction (power and ethanol I believe). There's is also the Washes, a flood relief system for built up areas upstream, which stops you getting flooded.

All of the above work better with decent broadband, farming especially which is getting more and more reliant on web access.

Please think outside your own mindset before posting.

[Chris Parsons]

Re: Pity the poor rural business

@Ledswinger - amazing! Not only do you post complete tosh, but, having advertised your lack of foresight to the world, you then do another post which, paraphrased says 'no, you did get it right first time, I really am a dick'.

Well done.

[Da Weezil]

Re: Pity the poor rural business

Rural Tiddlers... Does that include the SME's round here that maintain the LNG processing plants and terminals and the oil refineries and the local power station (soon to be 2) that keep your lights on, your office warm and your car fuelled? Rural doesn't mean a village green with an exchange on it, nor are all SME's kitchen table start ups, in the same way as I'm sure not ALL urban dwellers have their heads up their arse... only some.

We have several SME heavy engineering firms locally in the petro-chem sector than need to be here (its where the customers are) that are pushed out of town by planning restrictions for industrial units, that only makes things more difficult, I know a couple of businesses that barely have broadband and are at the limit of the cabinets reach it is where the industrial zone was sited so they have little choice about location. Sometimes its a lot more complex than the average office droid can figure. Something in the region of 25% of the UK gas supply enters the network not 10 miles from where I am sitting. That network and plant needs upkeep, and its SME's that do the bulk of it.

[Peter Johnston 1]

Re: Pity the poor rural business

The reason why this imbalance exists is because of bias in investment in the industrial era.

But commuting to cities is also the cause of most of our vehicle pollution. And cities have higher crime, lower life expectancy and more mental health issues.

We should stop subsidising city living.

[Alan Bourke]

I heard a Radio 4 thing about this last year.

What struck me was it seemed to be mainly people who had moved to a little village somewhere, started a business - often to do with design or something else involving shifting huge files around - and the last thing on their list to check was available broadband, rather than the first thing.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have decent BB, I'm saying don't start a business and THEN complain about it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I heard a Radio 4 thing about this last year.

Bit like the people in a town or city that whine about the noise, crime and pollution.

You moved there, so live with it.

[Aslan]

Meaning you desire crime, unpleasant noise and choking pollution?

[Tom 7]

Re: I heard a Radio 4 thing about this last year.

Or maybe they did! I'm 6 miles from the exchange which has just gone FTTC . My cabinet was 2 miles away - its now apparently moved back to the exchange when it comes to BB though the engineers that come to swap over the pairs when it rains still have trouble not calling it ' the cabinet'.

[Baldie]

Re: I heard a Radio 4 thing about this last year.

I recently moved to the county town of a home county (a county where many villages have fibre, apparently) and am approximately 50m from the cabinet. Just after I moved in (about 7 months ago) I saw some contractors doing some cabling just down the road and I confirmed with them that they were doing something to enable fibre. "Be another couple of weeks" they said cheerily. BT are currently predicting 3-6 months. I am an SME of just one, so not economically significant, but really fed up that since Maggie sold the family silver we have watched pretty much the whole developed world improve more rapidly than us while the company that still enjoys an effective monopoly in (huge swathes of) this country pulls us down (town and country). But loads of Tories (and a few unprincipled socialists) made some cash so that's OK, eh?

[Billa Bong]

Rural areas no place for business?

That's what several people are saying above.

I have a client who needs to be physically where they are. They have 2 live ADSL lines, one of which breaks every 3-7 days and the other of which is dog-slow. Having battled with various ADSL "providers" (i.e. bill generators) and OpenReach for 5 years they have no better a connection now than back then. Each successive "fix" doesn't actually fix anything, only restore service temporarily.

However, unlike 5 years ago their suppliers have moved all their services online. The companies that provide their business management software have removed the dedicated server they had on premise and put them in the cloud. Their clients have insisted that everything is done electronically.

So the upshot isn't that my client is in the wrong place, but people and companies assume that "everyone can use the internet, right?"... wrong, I'm afraid. Very wrong.

[Roland6]

Re: Rural areas no place for business?

It would not surprise me to find that many 'townies' who are dismissive of 'rural' internet, are among the first to complain about mobile coverage when they venture into the great outdoors...

[Uberseehandel]

BT's Broadband service is so bad, I'm nominating them for a Comedy Award

Their technicians are barely trained and the engineer's have, shall we say, unusual design goals

I never believed it possible, they make me want to live in South Korea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice timing

I'm sitting here waiting for my "superfast" fibre broadband to be turned on today. Estimated line speed: between 1 and 2.9Mb/s. Which will be a massive improvement over my ADSL...

[Anonymous Coward]

Usual government/big corporate thinking

In our rural area, millions were on offer to roll out a fibre loop a couple of hundred miles long. That's being installed at the moment. Only there are no plans to use it for exchanges, even the ones the cable actually passes through. One small village through which it passes actually has no ADSL at all. Still, the usual suspects have pocketed their millions, the MP can claim that there's fibre everywhere, and we're all still on edge-of-range copper ADSL.

[Gergmchairy]

Da Weezil, it sounds like your not far from me... I was looking forward to the results of the 'Better Broadband for Norfolk' project... but having spoken to them recently it appears my local '8mb' exchange isn't getting any funds allocated... Rather annoying as they are now busy upgrading Great Yarmouth, which already has Virgin / talktalk etc... Seems rather more like BT playing catch-up with the competitors to me....

[cs94njw]

The FSB! That tricksy Russian Secret Service!

[Anonymous Coward]

Midwest America chiming in ...

I live 6 miles from the edge of a million person metro. 2.5 miles from a large chocolate factory. One mile from various options of cable/fiber/easy wireless. My options are dial up, satellite or uber expensive ridiculously limited cellular service (owing to terrain is difficult as well). There are a few wireless options available but I need a 100ft tower to get over the terrain to get line of sight to the antenna. If it were not for my corporation providing me an unlimited cellular hot spot (not available to average consumer), I would be doing without or going to the local coffee shop to get online. I am thoroughly disgusted with giant telecom's raking in money, getting laws passed to guarantee the continuation of raking in money, the ignoring of mandates to push networking out to rural areas and the suppression of municipalities from rolling their own network when no others will provide.

[David Roberts]

Still using dial up?

That won't be poor benighted SMEs hunkered down in their rural idylls.

That will be the SMEs (and quite a few large enterprises) in all towns throughout the UK who won't cough the dosh to upgrade their point of sale terminals from dial up to broadband.

[Sirius Lee]

Here's a solution

Stop whining and move. Sure, it doesn't look as nice and it costs a bit more. That's life. The reality is that high(er) speed broadband costs me the cost of living in a place where it exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Here's a solution

FFS. The huge majority of people living in rural locations CANNOT AFFORD TO MOVE.

Arsehole.

Just for once, think of someone other than yourself.

[Valerion]

Re: Here's a solution

Stop whining and move. Sure, it doesn't look as nice and it costs a bit more. That's life. The reality is that high(er) speed broadband costs me the cost of living in a place where it exists.

Good idea. I'll just pick up the farm, or the industrial complex, and put it down in the middle of the nearest large city. I might have to demolish hundreds of millions of pounds worth of buildings, but at least I'll get better Facebook access.

[Skyeman]

Inevitable...

The replication of a market-led approach via Government intervention is an inevitable consequence of privatising a natural monopoly. I think BT won all the bids in the current BDUK programme, so it is not surprising that a programme that was meant to be an intervention in areas of market failure is actually only doing what is cost-effective for BT. Yes, you can argue that priority is given to higher population densities, and that the have-nots are too small to fret over - they can move house if they feel strongly enough. But don't forget they are taxpayers too, and find themselves subsidising Netflix for the suburbs while being excluded from what the Government say is an essential part of modern life - not to mention the irony of Government services for farmers and crofters that are being moved online. Rural communities get electricity (usually), water (mostly) and post, due to national pricing models and universal service commitments. It is too late to impose a USC on BT now that they are a private company with shareholders. And since the providers assume that most people get a decent service, the amount of data pushed out for even basic services rises every year. Marginal broadband steadily becomes unusable broadband over time. Welcome to the digital divide.

[Sherrie Ludwig]

At least the UK has noticed

I'm on the Illinois/Wisconsin border in the US, about an hour-and-a-half northwest of Chicago and the best I can get, FOR ANY MONEY, is called 5Mbps, but tests at .5Mbps download, .3upload. And what is the US plan to upgrade this?......crickets. Gee, it's quiet in the country.