APPENDIX 4
Memorandum submitted by Ms Susan Walker
(S11)
I am writing in response to information received
from the Countryside Alliance with respect to your investigation
into Broadband in the Countryside. We live in the Hambleden Valley
which lies between Henley on Thames and Marlow. Within this valley
there are over 500 households and farms that cannot obtain broadband.
Despite repeated requests from ourselves and our neighbours to
BT, we are told there are no plans to service this area. And,
the only way they might consider serving this area is if we mount
a campaign with our neighbours and obtain somewhere between 100
and 200 individual requests that in total can be sent into BT.
Letters appear weekly in the Marlow Free Press and the Henley
Standard expressing concerns but it appears that nothing can be
done with BT. In addition, we do not have any access to either
NTL or Telewest for cable television or alternative telephony
services, or broadband services so we are restricted to BT or
no service at all.
There are several Remote Switching Centres in
the valley—homed back into Henley or Marlow and the stance
from BT is that they have no plans to upgrade them for broadband
services.
It should also be stated that the majority of
people that live in this valley are either professional people
or farmers and we all could use this extra facility to enable
us to either work from home or be able to enhance the businesses
that many are running.
Can you please force BT to implement broadband
for areas such as ours. They have implemented it in Henley and
I am not sure about Marlow. Although we live in an absolutely
wonderful countryside location, we are really not in a remote
community but part of the Thames Valley Home Counties and BT should
be made to upgrade their switches to enable broadband in not only
our area but many that are similar to ours.
Thank you in advance for anything that you can
do. I would be pleased to discuss this issue further if you have
questions.
Susan Walker
3 February 2003
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