He addressed a select group of MPs, local Government leaders and broadband providers and vendors. Speaking under a themed section entitled, “Urban and Rural Issues”, Mr Bolton questioned whether the Government was spending its broadband funds wisely by investing more into urban areas in order to give “better” broadband.
“Surely the Government would get a better and faster ROI by providing a broadband service to people who do not have any? I would argue that £10m invested in rural areas would cover more people, faster and get better ROI than the same amount invested in an urban area,” he said.
“Nearly ten million people – 20% of England’s population – live in rural areas, which make up 86% of the area of the country. So the issue we are being faced with is that the current rural deployment projects are not giving 100% coverage of the area being invested in – we are getting 85-90% depending on what region, which means there would still be nearly around 1.5 million people with no broadband whatsoever.”
Mr Bolton highlighted projects in the UK and around the world where fixed wireless broadband is solving this dilemma with dramatic results in the face of high bandwidth demand. He also reminded his audience that less than three months ago the European Union had approved fixed wireless as a technology that could attract NGA (Next Generation Access) funding.
Joint sponsors of this event were NG Events Ltd, who will be running three major conferences across the UK throughout 2013, covering all aspects of Next Generation Network provision. They are Digital Scotland in Edinburgh (22 May), the Intelligent Cities Conference in Leeds (19 June) and the NextGen National Conference in London (14-15 October).