Abstract
In the UK, the geography of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure required for Internet connectivity is such that high speed broadband and mobile phone networks are generally less available in rural areas compared with urban areas or, in other words, as remoteness and population sparsity increase so too does the likelihood of an area having no or very poor broadband connectivity. Against a policy backdrop of UK Government efforts to bring forward network infrastructure upgrades and to improve the accessibility of broadband services in locations where there is a weak commercial investment case, this paper considers the options for the ‘final few’ in the prevailing ‘Digital by Default’ public services context. The paper outlines the Rural Public Access WiFi Services project, a study focused upon enabling Internet connectivity for commercially ‘hard to reach’ rural areas in the UK. The Rural Public Access WiFi Services concept and the experiment are introduced before findings from a pilot deployment of a broadband service to households in a remote rural area, who may be classified as ‘digitally excluded’, are presented. The paper then reflects on our field experiment and the potential of the Rural Public Access WiFi Services service model as a solution to overcoming some of the digital participation barriers manifest in the urban–rural divide. Early indications show that the Rural Public Access WiFi Services model has the potential to encourage participation in the Digital Economy and could aid the UK Government’s Digital by Default agenda, although adoption of the model is not without its challenges.
Highlights
In the UK, the geography of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure required for Internet connectivity is such that high speed broadband and mobile phone networks are generally less available in rural areas compared with urban areas or, in other words, as remoteness and population sparsity increase so too does the likelihood of an area having no or very poor broadband connectivity
This translates threefold: first, the provision of fixed and mobile ICT infrastructure exhibits far more variability in terms of availability, speed and cost in rural than in urban areas; second, from a rural perspective, the benefits of online connectivity in the countryside may be relatively greater than in urban areas, due to barriers of distance to alternatives (Commission for Rural Communities, 2009; Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2014); and third, the reality is that many individuals who live in rural areas are unable to capitalise upon the opportunities broadband offers because, where they live and work, the ICT infrastructure is not ‘fit for purpose’
We focus on the ‘final few’ as regards infrastructure provision and discuss the potential of the Rural Public Access WiFi Service (PAWS) experiment as a solution to overcoming some of the barriers apparent in the urban–rural divide, encouraging participation in the Digital Economy (DE) and, in turn, supporting the UK Government’s Digital by Default agenda
Summary
In the UK, the geography of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure required for Internet connectivity is such that high speed broadband and mobile phone networks are generally less available in rural areas compared with urban areas or, in other words, as remoteness and population sparsity increase so too does the likelihood of an area having no or very poor broadband connectivity. Evidence supports the existence of an urban–rural digital divide and, a ‘deep rural’ versus ‘shallow rural’ and ‘urban’ divide (Farrington et al, 2015; Philip et al, forthcoming) This translates threefold: first, the provision of fixed and mobile ICT infrastructure exhibits far more variability in terms of availability, speed and cost in rural than in urban areas; second, from a rural perspective, the benefits of online connectivity in the countryside may be relatively greater than in urban areas, due to barriers of distance to alternatives (Commission for Rural Communities, 2009; Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2014); and third, the reality is that many individuals who live in rural areas are unable to capitalise upon the opportunities broadband offers because, where they live and work, the ICT infrastructure is not ‘fit for purpose’. The Digital Agenda for Europe, part of the Europe 2020 strategy, focuses on exploiting the potential of ICTs to ‘foster innovation, economic growth and progress’ (European Commission, 2015: no page numbers) and states that ‘Europe needs download rates of 30 Mbps for all of its citizens by 2020’ (European Commission, 2015: no page numbers)
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