The internet has long been hailed as an inclusive and democratising resource providing a staggering abundance of information and helpful services. However, many people still feel isolated from the so-called age of information by the mere fact of living in an area where high-speed web connections are harder to find. Good news is on the way, however, as certain companies are getting behind ICT infrastructure developments that look to improve these unfair circumstances. Investments are being made, for example, in creative upgrades and corporate outsourcing programmes that will help rural estates participate in the online world through next generation access and community broadband set-ups.
We often hear the term ‘online community’ these days in reference to social networks created between friends, acquaintances and coworkers in the virtual realm. Clearly these networks can serve us well, particularly inasmuch as they make organizing events and meetings or sharing documents or articles more straightforward. For some time, rural inhabitants have experienced difficulties in reaping the benefits of such web-based communities, though they may have made up for their technological lack by strengthening connections and communications in the physical realm. Increasingly, however, rural estates are having it both ways thanks to the success of community broadband: they are finding themselves in a position enabling them to maintain the strong relationships they have established locally through more conventional means, as well as gaining in the online stakes. It really is a win-win situation.
Community broadband projects thus have a social as well as a professional function. Additionally, next generation access works to answer the requirements of both households, who may want to save time and resources by carrying out everyday tasks such as shopping and paying bills online, and businesses whose expansion and success has become unavoidably dependent on welcoming their presence on the internet. That is why ICT infrastructure upgrades represent such a serious and wide-reaching undertaking. Indeed, a great number of local councils are showing their support for the companies investing in improvements to internet access. In the north of the UK, in areas such as the South Yorkshire towns and cities of Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster in particular, many business centres and science parks actually count on the technological innovations making broadband better: their very survival depends on the advantages that are sometimes only accessible online.