Tuesday 23 September 2003

Boadband Internet connections and wildlife extinctions

What is the connection between Broadband and wildlife extinctions? you may well ask. The answer is that the World Land trust is striving to save endangered wildlife, yet is unable to get broadband. And broadband Internet connections are becoming essential tools for much of the fundraising activities of the 21 Century.



Our current Internet connections are slow, and relatively costly. Broadband would give us highspeed connections, much cheaper. If we were a commercial competitive business, this would be a serious competitive disadvantage. And yet the Broadband suppliers are under no obligation to provide the service. Expensive advertising extolling the virtues of broadband pervade TV and other media – but even though it often only costs a few thousand pounds to upgrade exchanges, it is not being made available. The reason seems to be, that in rural areas, where demand is low, it is much more profitable for the telephone companies to sell the old slow connection, or to sell the even more expensive satellite connections. I wonder if in fact this sort of unfair discrimination against small rural communities is actually allowed under EU legislation. Surely there should be some protection for what is clearly a case of exploitation of small businesses?



Help save wildlife --- lobby for broadband for rural areas.

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