Britain's Prince Charles bemoans rural Internet 'deserts'

According to a recent item from AFP news, Prince Charles said that people living in rural areas had been left in the Internet's "slow lane", placing them at a "severe disadvantage" in the modern world.
He called for the public and private sector to come together to find a solution to the broadband gap.

He warned that the online "broadband deserts" would turn into "ghost communities" if struggling businesses in the countryside could not get high-speed Internet access. "The handicap this places on those rural businesses, schools, doctors' surgeries and local authorities, which inhabit these so-called 'broadband deserts', is immense.

He said the number of dairy farms had declined by 50 percent in the past decade, and if people were to stay on the land, "they need all the help they can get". "Denying them broadband, and effectively cutting them off from the Internet, will only be more likely to drive them off the hills and into the towns and cities."

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