Ed Russell

Yesterday there was an announcement of a recommendation for all UK homes to have access to 2Mbps broadband by 2012.  It’s part of Lord Carters “Digital Britain” report and it’s got me thinking about how this is going to be delivered and how to get community involvement.

Yes, I agree it’s a  noble aim and that we need to make sure that the digital divide is reduced with currently about 60% of homes having broadband access, but what isn’t clear as yet is how they are going to fund the delivery of  it and how they are going to encourage people  to actually take up their right to have the access.

It got me thinking about a project that was launched in 2004 in Nuenen (near Eindhoven).  Ons Net (our net) was a community broadband project which took a local community which a commercial company said it would be too expensive to give broadband and setup a scheme where local residents all paid a small amount which meant they could get connected.  Because there was no profit motive for the venture (rather it was a co-operative designed to get the community on-line) they needed about 35% of people to sign up to 15 Euros a month to make the installation viable.  In fact they got closer to 85% and made over £1 million profit in the first year.  What is really interesting though is not that they managed to make it work and install next generation 100Mbps fibre into most homes in the town but that the town demographic was mostly retired elderly people.  Instead of just focusing on speeds or anything technological they focused on community services such as supporting security, home care, the local TV channel and improving the community as a whole.  Building communities like this and using the technology as a tool to help aspects of everyone’s daily life deliver surely has to be a focus in the new digital Britain in order to gain inclusion of the community as a whole rather than just the people who are used to the internet and can see it’s benefit. 

If you want to read some more on Ons Net take a look here.  There is a UK based Co-operative following the same type of approaches and they can be found here.

Posted by Ed Russell