SuffolkOnline.net

Norfolk Future Conference this week will see a senior BT executive address the audience, and if the content in terms of BT pushing its ADSL2+ product as reported by Evening News 24 is true, then it is a case of not much change for Norfolk.

Many of the exchanges that will be enabled by BT, already have been enabled by other providers, this means Norfolk residents living in Norwich, Kings Lynn and the other large towns will simply see more choice, but places like Swaffham will probably be waiting until 2012 to see ADSL2+ and maybe even longer.

The demographics of Norfolk are such that it has around 375,000 people living in urban areas, another 175,000 in towns and the fringe areas, with a very large 265,000 in villages and hamlets. The problem being that by enabling a service on perhaps a dozen exchanges you can cover almost half of the Norfolk population.

This still does not resolve the issue of providing high speed broadband to rural areas, much like we face in Suffolk. BT may continue to enable town exchanges for higher speed broadband but something needs to be done about rural broadband service provision.