The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) will use its presentation at the Digital Dales Colloquium today to lobby the UK government into introducing a new scheme of special 'Broadband Grants' for rural "notspot" homes.

The proposals will be finalised within the next three weeks and more details should follow soon. At present we can’t see how this would work in areas where broadband is not currently available, unless the proposal seeks to force everybody onto costly and often inflexible Satellite services.

Still, Satellite is at least significantly better than dialup and prices should come down as new services surface throughout 2010. Assuming the new products can also offer good usage allowances then that would only leave one major stumbling block, the high cost of Satellite hardware and installation. A grant might just be enough to make it palatable.