Posted: 27th Oct, 2011 By: MarkJ


The Country Land and Business Association (CLA), a land owners lobby group for England and Wales, has won the support of
Hugh Bonneville for its forthcoming
Can’t Get Online Week event.
Hugh Bonneville is perhaps best known for playing the
Earl of Grantham in ITV's popular TV period drama,
Downton Abbey. Next week he will be turning his attention to the broadband internet connectivity difficulties that so often plague rural regions, which he also suffers from at home.
Hugh Bonneville explained:
"I yearn for a connection that just stays on, never mind one that goes at the speed of light. I'd love to run aspects of my work from home; I'd love to sign up for services that stream content but the connection's just too unreliable. Some days I can't even send an email and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it.
The BT Infinity advertisements drive me nuts. When I applied I was told there aren’t enough people in my area to merit the local exchange being upgraded but that if sufficient support was drummed up, it might get the opportunity to go in a ballot and possibly be considered for improvement.
Ironically, the best broadband connection I've experienced was a lot further than 40 miles from London - it was in Liberia."
CLA President, William Worsley, added:
"One fifth of rural England still does not have adequate capacity broadband, and in today’s world that is just not acceptable. The Government wants us to fill in tax returns online because it’s more cost-effective and schools expect children to do homework online. These are only possible if homes and businesses have a good broadband connection.
Internet service providers must concentrate on bringing broadband not-spots up to speed rather than making the already fast even faster."
The CLA's week long campaign, which runs from 30th October to 6th November 2011, is lobbying to ensure that every rural business and household
can access a broadband connection of at least 5Mbps (Megabits per second).
The campaign will also see IT and social media expert,
John Popham, touring rural communities in order to raise awareness of the problems. John will carry a petition with him for people with broadband problems to sign; there's also an e-petition for those who can get online:
www.cla.org.uk/policy_work/petitions/.
As a side note William Worsley, the CLA president, claims that his ancestor, Frances, married the real-life Lord Grantham in the 18th Century, which is nice.