Could Norfolk people do more to get broadband?

Could people in Norfolk do more to get Broadband?

HAYLEY MACE

08 March 2010

Surfing the web can often be a time-consuming process, clicking desperately with your mouse while you wait for links to open and images to upload.

But, as the wait for faster broadband in Norfolk and Suffolk goes on, has the time come for businesses and home-owners to take the matter into their own hands?

Only last week it was reported that one of the issues driving many young people out of rural areas was a lack of high-speed internet access.

So, perhaps a successful project that has got keyboards tapping and hard drives whirring in Cumbria could teach East Anglia a thing or two?

Communities living in the beautiful but remote area of Alston Moor regard their home as "England's Last Wilderness". Nestling in the foothills of the north Pennines near Penrith, it is an isolated area of unspoilt countryside at the crossroads of five historic trans-Pennine routes.

But. when it comes to the internet, the inhabitants are streets ahead of their rural neighbours, thanks

to a community-driven broadband scheme.

In 2001, they bid successfully for £1.2m of government funding as one of seven disadvantaged areas recognised as needing help to access a broadband internet connection.

The following year, the Cybermoor broadband co-operative was launched, the first of its kind in the UK, to try to bring high-speed surfing to the hilltops of Cumbria.

Now, after eight years of hard work, that co-operative is going from strength to strength and has 350 members, all of whom have access to fast broadband.

Cybermoor project manager Daniel Heery said: "We paid for masts to be put up in areas which were not being served by the main operators, and from that we were able to start offering broadband. Now, we keep upgrading and we're trying to keep our service comparable with what you would expect in a city.

"We are putting in new fibre-optic cables, which should soon mean we will have an even faster service than some of our neighbouring urban areas."

Members of the co-operative pay for their broadband package and also cough up £1 membership as an investment in Cybermoor. This entitles everyone to have a say on the service and how it is being run.

Mr Heery said that, as well as bringing internet access to isolated areas, the project had delivered employment benefits since many people used to have to commute to large towns for their work.

He added: "It has paved the way for a lot more home-working. It has given people the opportunity to bring in new work and to do jobs from home which they wouldn't have had the opportunity to do before.

"It was really noticeable during the recent bad weather, as some of the roads here couldn't be cleared for a couple of weeks because of the heavy snow, but people were able to work from home instead."

Now, it is possible that the achieve-ments of the good folk of Alston Moor could set a precedent for similar schemes here. The East of England Development Agency (Eeda) launched the Erebus (Eastern Region Broadband Uplift Scheme) project last year to encourage people to push for faster connection speeds and is already working with Cybermoor and other projects to find out how the ideas can be applied in this region.

An agency spokesman said: "We're looking at what is going on in other regions and how demand for broadband has been serviced.

"We are finding areas around the UK which have come up with different ways of solving the

problem and looking at bringing them to the east of England."

And the agency will host a broadband summit next Monday, when local authorities will look at some of those successful projects and consider any that might work in the east.

Check out the agency's website at www.eeda.org.uk. More about the Cybermoor scheme at www.cybermoor.org