Welsh AM Russell George Launches Montgomeryshire Broadband Campaign

Welsh Assembly Member, Russell George (Conservative), has launched a new campaign to help bring faster broadband to Montgomeryshire (Maldwyn) in north Wales (UK). As part of this effort he wants locals to help him identify broadband “Not Spots” by undertaking an area-wide speed test over 18-19th August.

The ‘Speed Up Our Broadband in Montgomeryshire’ campaign – http://www.montybroadband.com/ – has also won crucial support from Welsh ISP Exwavia, which recently pledged to turn Montgomeryshire into the “fastest rural broadband region in the UK” (here). Naturally it hasn’t achieved that yet as otherwise there would be no need for the campaign.

Russell George said:

“Broadband is imperative for rural communities – it’s a utility just like electricity that we all need. In today’s electronic age residents need it for communicating by e-mail or even accessing banking now that many rural branches have closed. Farmers have to update livestock records online or face fines!.

A good broadband connection is vital for businesses to sell goods and services, to send and store important data in the ‘cloud’, and to compete with competitors not just in the UK, but throughout the world. Without it they cannot invest for the future and create new employment in the area.”

Annette Burgess, Managing Director of eXwavia, added:

“As a local broadband provider we’re conscious of how communities are struggling to even connect to broadband in some instances, let alone get a reasonable speed.

We’re working with several communities to bring fast and reliable broadband and we’ve delivered to places such as Adfa and Cefn Coch where businesses and residents can now connect with a speed of 4Mbps or even 60Mbps.

But we’re supporting the ‘Speed Up Our Broadband in Montgomeryshire’ campaign because nobody really knows how bad it is in some communities. By undertaking the speed test weekend in August we’ll have a much clearer picture allowing our AM to identify where pressure needs to be placed to improve broadband provision.”

Apparently the results of the speed tests can be sent to the campaign through http://www.montyspeedtest.com/ (at the time of writting this site is not yet setup) and will thus allow Mr George to identify areas where help is needed the most and to lobby for better broadband provision within the local government.

Posters are also being distributed to residents and businesses throughout the area to place in windows and on notice boards in order to demonstrate support and to promote the campaign.

Meanwhile the Welsh Government (WG) have been slow to make much process on their questionable £400m plan (here) to roll-out superfast broadband (30Mbps+) services to 100% of Welsh businesses by the middle of 2016 and homes by 2020. Sadly BT is the only operator left to do business with.

The region of Montgomeryshire, which resides in the principal area of Powys (county), is known to be one of the UK’s most rural and isolated regions.