Broadband - The Parish Council's Position
With regard to the Editor's comments on the Parish Council's lack of
support for broadband. This is not the correct interpretation of the
council's view on the matter. We fully support the provision of a broadband
service to all of the parishioners. Also the use of broadband in schools and
universities is obviously a great step forward, as well as its business use.
The point that we were trying to make however was that to provide broadband to socially excluded groups as defined by Charlotte Cane at the April meeting was not best use of the tax payer's money as individual children did not need such a fast system for personal educational use.
Broadband is most useful for the downloading of large files such as those used in business and by groups, or for downloading film clips, music or playing interactive games. Generally individuals do not have this need for educational purposes, as should they need to download a very large file they have other work to do while waiting for it to finish.
As stated in Mr. Matheson's letter broadband also opens computers up to hacking and viruses that then require further expense to guard against. It was therefore felt that using any money available to provide a greater number of needy people with the necessary hardware and a basic connection would be more positive.
Reply
It was not so much what Universities are doing internally that I had in mind as the use that they, and in due course schools, will make of the Internet for providing educational and recruitment material to the wider community. Cambridge University is already developing internet video as part of its drive to attract applicants from a wider variety of backgrounds and, while this is initially intended for viewing in schools, those with high speed internet access will also access it from home. There is already interactive educational material which requires video speeds.
People living in urban areas have easy and relatively cheap access to high speed network connections, those like us in rural areas risk not doing so unless we put some of our own effort into it to make up for potential suppliersÕ lower profit margins.
The threat from hackers is greater with broadband than dial-up connections but recent versions of operating systems like Windows include firewall software which can reduce this threat to well below the level of an un-firewalled dial-up connection at no extra cost other than the time needed to set it up. This reflects broadband becoming a mainstream rather than a luxury technology.
Broadband is coming?
We hope! Last month the supplier's web site said "target service date is in May", it now says "Target service date is by the end of May, subject to finding sufficient node hosts in the village" but it's getting very close to the end of the month! Watch this space - or does a watched network never connect?