Rural UK ISP County Broadband Donates Tablets to School

Colchester-based ISP County Broadband, which is supported by a £46m investment from Aviva and working to roll-out a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the rural East of England, has donated an “initial batch” of 10 new tablets to St Andrew’s Primary School in Weeley.

There are concerns that a digital divide will emerge with children who don’t have access to equipment being put at a disadvantage. According to Ofcom, just under 10% of children do not have a laptop, tablet or desktop at home whilst over 800,000 rely on a mobile broadband connection instead of a fixed line broadband service. County Broadband hopes to tackle some of that.

The tablets being donated appear to be Amazon Fire 7 Tablets with 16GB of storage, which cost about £49.99 a pop and are quite restrictive in terms of what software you can install. But they should be handy for the 5+ age group that goes to a Primary School.

Lloyd Felton, CEO of County Broadband, said: “We are very pleased to donate these much-needed devices and support our local communities. We hope they’ll be a huge help for teachers, parents and children – both now in tough times and to help embrace future e-learning. We’re very much looking to the future with our rollout of full-fibre broadband infrastructure across rural north-east Essex and this vision goes hand-in-hand with schools and communities also looking to future-proof themselves with access to the right, modern technology.”