Keeping us informed - broadband Oxfordshire

David Robertson has sent out a letter to local District, Town and Parish councils about "A Connected Oxfordshire".

His letter

1 Broadband is more than a luxury. It is a right and OCC agree

2 We are an LEP (Local Enterprise Partnership) and have a duty to grow business, science and acedemia

3 Whole county must be connected, and this is achievable, realistic and viable

The information

What

* Government wants fast, reliable broadband by 2015.


Why

* Broadband in a rural county like Oxfordshire is very important to attract inward investment. It will allow home working, links to academic resources, health support, technological advantage. In addition to personal access to education, entertainment, local social endeavours and public services.

BB is a right.


How

* We have already the OCN (Oxfordshire Community Network) a fibre network linking schools, libraries, offices etc. This was set up by the CC. We will seek partners who can build on the OCN. Our partner will have to dig new cabling, but the OCN will provide a backbone


What can you do?

* Show private ISPs and broadband suppliers how much we want it. E.g. signup for BT Retail's "Race To Infinity".


* Have broadband champions across the county

My comments

There seems to be a lot of confusion between supplying USC/2Mbps to us all (the broadband map of Oxfordshire shows lots of areas below 2Mbps today, the north part of Banbury around where I live gets less then 2Mbps today, mine is only 0.5Mbps.

The Oxfordshire Broadband Disaster


I look forward to getting some of the vast confusion clarified, announcements from central government (Vaizey/Osborne) do not help as they are confused, spin, and inadequate, as they try to push the responsibility over to local government. They talk about £200M 'faster" for 2M homes by 2015 (18-10-10), £530M/4 yrs being available for "faster" (20-10-10), with a "significant amount" coming from the BBC budget... turns out to be 2 x £150M/yr. Where did the odd £30M come from? They may continue with another £150M/yr up to 2017 also from the BBC.

However BT say that they will spend £2.5bn, and fibre could be delivered to 85% of Oxfordshire.... or this more spin?

What government did say (July 2010) is that USC will slip from 2012 objective to 2015, and that by 2015 some undefined % of the population will get NGA through a mish-mash of pressure on BT and private/local enterprise.

I have expressed my opinion on signing up "I disagree with signing up for "Race To Infinity" as it gives BT retail a commercial advantage, gives Openreach free market data and is actually a very limited program".