Liz Overstall of Dulas, Hereford, says at this price speed isn’t everything for Broadband (From Hereford Times)

Liz Overstall of Dulas, Hereford, says at this price speed isn’t everything for Broadband

7:00am Saturday 4th February 2012 in Letters

AT A time of austerity the taxpayer is being asked to pay £6 million out of the 2012/13 council budget to match Borders Broadband Government funding.

What will we get for this impressive sum of money?

Herefordshire certainly needs an adequate broadband service that reaches every home and business in the county. But the Borders Broadband project will not deliver that. It will install fibre optic cable infrastructure around south Herefordshire, north Gloucestershire and north Gwent.

After that, it’s down to commercial companies to use it, to provide and develop a service.

Cabling to each individual community is not part of the project so there is no guarantee that our excluded rural communities will get any improvement in service at all.

Those of us who do have a broadband service are paying the same for a bad, slow service that people living in other areas, pay for an excellent, fast service.

Surely if we want to get the commercial companies to deliver a fast nationwide service, government should insist that they are only able to charge for the level of service they deliver?

In a free-market economy, the race would then be on to deliver fast services nationwide.

Satellite broadband services can already be supplied to rural areas for £25 a month and prices will fall.

When confused about taxation anomalies it pays to ask who benefits from this? Fibre optic infrastructure benefits British Telecom. I look forward to the Broadband Champions explaining why any further taxpayers’ funding is required.

LIZ OVERSTALL, Dulas, Hereford.