Politics in Worcestershire (England) can sometimes be messy, although one local councillor has now taken it to another level by saying that the use of state aid funding to improve broadband connectivity would only help people who choose to “live out in the sticks with the badgers and rabbits“.
As a quick recap, Superfast Worcestershire is currently working with BTOpenreach to expand the reach of “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services to 90% of local premises by June 2016 (55,000 additional premises) and a second contract will later push this out to 95% by “autumn 2017” (note: 94% should be able to receive “superfast” 24Mbps+ speeds).
Meanwhile the perhaps mildly derogatory comments, which seem to overlook the fact that such animals can also be found living happily in urban areas and that the local scheme has so far used up most of its funding on upgrades in more populous semi-urban locations, came from the mouth of local Councillor and Labour group leader Peter McDonald.
McDonald has form in this area after having previously criticised the project for spending public money on broadband while “people are homeless, struggling on benefits and relying on foodbanks” (here), which somewhat overlooks the economic and social benefits of such connectivity, not to mention how that can feed back into growing the local economy and thus aiding public services.
The latest outburst appears to reflect McDonald’s frustration at news that another £3m+ has now been confirmed to help with the future expansion of faster broadband services into more rural areas, much of which is being returned by BT for reinvestment as part of the clawback (gain share) mechanism in Broadband Delivery UK contracts (here).
Councillor Peter McDonald said:
“What really annoys me, and many others in this room, is not getting our priorities right. Since when has it been this chamber’s priority to throw millions after millions at a private company?“
Meanwhile another Labour Councillor, Paul Denham, said: “There was an expectation that when we got this £3 million it’d be given back to the taxpayer but all we’re doing, in effect, is giving it straight back to the [BT].”
Indeed many have previously expressed a fair concern at the fact that BT has won so many of the contracts, often without any other bidders being involved. On the other hand BDUK’s framework hasn’t always been very inviting to alternative networks and councils can also be apprehensive about investing in smaller players where the risk of failure is more pronounced.
Sadly the only alternative being offered above is simply not to spend any public money at all on broadband and to instead hope that BT or other operators will feel generous enough to lash out millions on areas where they see no real prospect of a feasible economic return, which rarely happens except in some areas and then only very slowly (e.g. B4RN, Gigaclear).
At this point it’s worth considering that some of those areas still deemed to be “rural” can be quite large and may also include a number of urban trouble-spots, thus the picture is usually a lot more complex than suggested by the above councillors.
Naturally Labour’s local Conservative rivals have been quick to attack the comments, with Councillor Marc Bayliss saying, “I will not vote for prejudice against people who live in rural areas, this is a good investment in a vital public service and we should support it.”
As it stands the local authority has now voted to continue with the future funding allocation and it’s hoped that this will be put to good use in a future deployment, although we’re unlikely to see a phase three contract being signed until sometime later next year.
Comments are closed