Welsh Farming Unions Give Support to Montgomeryshire Broadband Campaign

The Monty Broadband campaign, which aims to bring faster internet access services into Montgomeryshire (Maldwyn) in northern Wales (UK), has today won vital support from the Farmers Union of Wales (FUW) and National Farming Union Cymru (NFUC).

The “Speed Up Our Broadband in Montgomeryshire” campaign, which was launched last month by Welsh Assembly Member Russell George (here), is also supported by Welshpool-based ISP Exwavia, which in April 2012 pledged to make it the “fastest rural broadband region in the UK” (here). The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and Mid Wales Manufacturing Group (MWMG) have also given their support.

The campaign claims that local businesses and farmers are being “penalised for not being able to access good broadband“, which they state is at least partly because of new legislation that requires certain taxation and other tasks to be completed online. Hard luck if you live in a “Not Spot” for internet connectivity.

Alwyn Vaughan, FUW County Chairman for Montgomeryshire, said:

“The FUW has been highlighting the problem of ‘not spots’ and poor speed broadband throughout rural Wales with the government and fully supported the Monty Broadband Campaign.

Many farming businesses rely on the internet for their tourism and direct sales businesses as well as administrative activities such as VAT, BCMS and shortly Single Payment applications will be going online and a good reliable internet connection will be required.”

Ed Chapman, NFU Cymru County Chairman for Montgomeryshire, said:

“The lack of broadband is causing real difficulties for some farmers in Montgomeryshire, who ironically have to complete more of their paper work online. It needs addressing sooner rather than latter.”

But what about the Welsh Government, which recently awarded its £425m contract for the Next Generation Broadband Wales tender to BT (here)? That aims for 96% of Welsh homes and businesses to have access to “world class broadband speeds” of up to 80Mbps (FTTC) by the end of 2015.

However the Managing Director of eXwavia, Annette Burgess, was quick to warn that the last 4% could impact the region because, “many parts of Wales, including Montgomeryshire, simply won’t be able to access good broadband through “conventional” means.” The campaign hopes to identify such areas by undertaking an area-wide speed test over 18-19th August.

Certainly it would be good to see truly “super-fast” infrastructure coming to the region but in the meantime there are other options, such as increasingly affordable Satellite solutions from the likes of Tooway Direct, Bentley Walker, BeyonDSL and many more (see our satellite ISP list). These might not be perfect for future needs (e.g. low usage allowances and high latency) but they’re good at performing most of the basic day-to-day tasks.