APPENDIX 9
Memorandum submitted by The Forest of
Dean and Wye Valley Review (S17)
LACK OF BROADBAND ACCESS ALREADY DAMAGING
TO THE FOREST OF DEAN AND LOWER WYE VALLEY
1. THE AREA
The Forest of Dean is a wooded rural area to
the west of the Severn Estuary with a history of coal mining and
forestry and until recent times a thriving electronics industry
in the form of the Rank Xerox company. It has suffered major setbacks
with the closure first of the coalmines (circa 1965) and Xerox
last year (loss of approximately 1,000 jobs in the final tranche
of around 5,000 total losses). With a few exceptions remaining
industries are small, there are a large number of unemployed people
and considerable numbers commute daily to Gloucester, Bristol
and Newport or further to Birmingham and Cardiff. Post-mining
the environment is highly attractive with high tourism potential
and the kinds of low environmental impact industries that would
benefit from broadband access would be ideal. It is also an ideal
environment for home-based internet users.
2. THE STATUS
QUO (A)
BT provides no broad bandwidth access in the
entire area, and has set "expressions of interest" thresholds
of 350 for the majority of exchanges. This may be practical for
the larger towns of Lydney, Coleford, Cinderford and Newent but
even here without any promotion by BT in this area these targets
are very high. Many smaller exchanges serving smaller populations
will clearly never be able to reach such targets. While BT ostensibly
has the ideal network for providing broadband access the possibility
has been raised that poor quality aluminium-copper mixture wires
have been laid in the area which would not support broadband—no
clarification has come from BT on this point but if it is true
it needs to be known to prevent raising false hopes.
3. THE STATUS
QUO (B)
Fibre-optic broad bandwidth "pipes"
are available in three sites where they have not yet been developed
as "hubs" to serve the surrounding area. This remains
a reasonably expensive option to BT and the network infrastructure
will have to be expanded. Wireless technology is also being explored
in parts of the Forest but this too has infrastructure problems
because of terrain difficulties, ie steep sided valleys. Satellite
access is available but remains an unpopular option with many
of the contracts advising its unsuitability because of transmission
lags for applications such as large file media downloading, conferencing
and game-playing—some of the major reasons for needing broad
bandwidths. Interested parties involved in campaigning for broadband
include Gloucestershire First, The Forest of Dean District Council
and the South West RDA and both Diana Organ MP and prospective
Conservative parliamentary candidate Mark Harper.
4. TRUE DEMAND
As with mobile telephones true demand cannot
properly be assessed by the cumbersome method of making declarations
of interest on the part of subscribers, only by introducing the
technology and waiting to see what happens. At the moment BT is
on the one hand extolling (through heavy TV advertising) the virtues
of constant on-line internet and telephone access, while holding
back on supplying this service to large areas including the Forest
and Wye Valley. There is a forgivable suspicion that such areas
are "at the bottom of the pile" in terms of BT's overall
revenue and (again forgivable) anger that other comparable areas
are already connected to the service.
5. UNFAIRNESS
If BT is not aware that there is a vast inequality
between the haves and the have nots as far as broadband access
is concerned it must be very naive. This can be interpreted as
abuse of a monopoly, arbitrarily disadvantaging this area and,
as we are aware, many similar rural areas, simply because we have
no alternatives. Significant damage to the local economy is already
being seen. Local estate agents are reporting home sales falling
through because broadband is not available. Who knows how many
casual inquirers have been "put off" relocating their
industries or their homes to this area?
6. THE REVIEW
CAMPAIGN
This newspaper has been actively campaigning
for BT to bring Broadband to the Forest and Wye Valley, and has
been collecting expressions of interest from readers with a regularly
published coupon for registration details. These are being lodged
with BT with the assistance of the local Lydney Area in Partnership
organisation. As a result the threshold for Lydney exchange, for
example, has in recent days been boosted form a fairly static
77 to 111 on its way to 350, and we intend to keep up this pressure
to two ends: One is that we reach the target and claim the "prize"
and the other is that BT may instead recognise the pressure for
broadband and install it anyway. Either result would be fine.
This is a lot of unrewarded work by a lot of people on BT's behalf.
7. CONCLUSIONS
The area desperately needs broad bandwidth internet
access to attract and keep modern industries highly suited to
this environment, curtailing the need for vast numbers of people
to commute daily to other centres on a congested road network.
To this end BT seems to be the main avenue for widespread access
and we believe it should regard this as a responsibility rather
than its current attitude of "prove you need it first".
BT knows we do! It also needs to "come clean" about
its copper-aluminium lines and any problems this may pose. Should
alternatives to BT be necessary efforts will need to be concentrated
on these avenues.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The attractive Forest of Dean and Lower Wye
Valley area suffers from mass unemployment yet is highly suitable
for low-impact industries based on ready internet access, also
home internet employment. Currently BT provides no broad bandwidth
access in the entire are and has set massive threshold "targets"
of expressions of interest before it will do so. Alternatives
are being actively examined but do not as yet offer an attractive
alternative. Arbitrarily it seems other areas have lower thresholds
and are already connected by BT. If BT (see paragraph 5) is not
aware that there is a vast inequality between the haves and have
nots as far as broadband access is concerned it must be very naive.
This can be interpreted as an abuse of monopoly, arbitrarily disadvantaging
this area, because we have no alternatives. Already local estate
agents are reporting house sales falling through because of lack
of broadband access. We believe BT, should regard broadband access
as a responsibility rather than maintaining its current attitude
of "prove you need it first".
Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Review
11 February 2003
| 
