Residents and businesses living in the borough’s towns, villages and hamlets are being urged to back the campaign to bring them faster broadband.
Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council is encouraging people to register for Hampshire County Council’s campaign superfast broadband – getting Hampshire connected before Friday 15 April 2011 at www.hants.gov.uk/broadband or by calling 01962 846381.
The county council-led campaign needs to prove that families and communities in rural areas want faster broadband and are willing to pay a one-off connection charge and the monthly charge.
This is to help the effort to secure Government funding to end the Hampshire’s ‘digital divide’. Around 80% of the telephone landlines in the county are likely to receive enhanced broadband services by 2015. But research has shown that people living in more rural areas are likely to miss out and be left behind with very slow speeds, or no coverage at all, as it is not commercially attractive for telecommunications businesses to upgrade their connections. There are ‘not spots’ and areas of poor coverage that adjoin urban areas too.
As the government funding will go to only a handful of areas across the UK, the borough council is urging its more rural residents to sign-up for the campaign to give Hampshire a better chance. The aim is that everyone in the area can enjoy the benefits of the increasing amounts of information, leisure activities, goods and services now being delivered through the internet.
The county council campaign complements the work that the borough council has been doing with Openreach, eHampshire and local communities in the areas in and around Basingstoke town centre dedicated to improving the town’s broadband connection speeds. See the Better, faster broadband for Basingstoke page to see if you are in the first phase of the upgrades under that project.
