News Item 5

Broadband for our Area?

If you are reading this, you are an Internet user. For other people, 90% in this country by next year, there are many ways to do this - ‘pay as you go’ dial up; ‘anytime’ dial up; and ‘on all the time’ cable or broadband. In our area, we appear to have only the first two. What is wrong with that? ‘Pay as you go’ can be the cheapest way, if you are a light user, whereas broadband is very expensive, no argument.

Well, for a start, it’s a matter of choice. I may choose not to spend my money on an expensive holiday or a large wide screen TV, but I would be very upset if I was told that I was among the 10% of the population in the country that was not allowed to do so. For all their fine words, this is what BT are saying to the minority in this country and, in particular, to all of us on the Sticklepath telephone exchange. Other than choice, there is the question of competitiveness for those of us who need to use the Internet for business. And even if you do not have a business but use your Internet connection for community, education, pleasure or just for everyday living, why should you be denied the use of your computer and your phone at the same time? Why should you be forced to spend ages for web sites to load or, if you want to exchange data, for your files to take for ever to put on the web. If you have more than one computer, why can’t you use both on the Internet, over the one line at the same time? All of this, if you are willing to spend your money on this, instead of on other things.

Below is the chart of the BT set trigger level showing how many, on the Sticklepath exchange, have registered an interest in broadband. If you haven’t done so yet, please do so now by contacting the site below. You are not committing yourself to anything, just expressing an interest and it could just take us up to the required level. Okehampton has it and many other villages and towns around us have it. Don’t deny yourself the choice. You may one day wish to use it!

http://www.bt.com/btbroadband/register/ns_register_intro.jsp

Apologies if the graphic is difficult to read. That is one of the choices that web sites have to make. If you use an image that is big and clear or a high quality photograph, it requires a lot of data to record that detail and therefore produces a large file, which takes a long while to download over a slow, dial up connection. There is always a compromise between quality and waiting time. This is also the reason you are usually limited to still photos or small, poor quality video and midi (computer generated) music and not big file, full length, vocal recordings.

There is one way that we in this area can get broadband, and that is by satellite. Several firms do this, but one is of particular interest, as it uses the existing Sky TV dish aerial. At the moment, they are only providing what is called a ‘one way’ service i.e. your signals are routed in the normal, dial up, land line way to the Internet whilst the sites you watch and any files you download are beamed down to your dish from their satellite.

The last time I checked, they were promising a new, two way system, for introduction in December. This is of more interest, where you have a lot of data to put up to the Internet. If you are only interested in downloading, the ‘one way’ system could suit you. As I’ve said before, it’s not cheap. But it’s nice to have the choice!

Have a look at : http://www.silvermead.co.uk/

Update 10th December
I received an e-mail today, from Silvermead stating that their 2 way services is nearly ready and is now planned for January.

I also received an e-mail from Mark Blacksell of Belstone who, together with Mark Rutter of South Zeal, is leading a campaign to drum up support for broadband on the Sticklepath exchange, For further information go to

http://www.sticklepath.org.uk