Britain; ISPs should have legal obligation on rural broadband

An articles published in the Telegraph (UK) reports that Internet providers should be under a legal obligation to offer fast broadband speeds across Britain to combat the worsening digital divide between urban and rural communities.

The problem of slow Internet speeds in the countryside was first highlighted in The Daily Telegraph when the Prince of Wales warned of “broadband deserts” in rural areas.

It is estimated 166,000 people live in “not spots” where there is no Internet connection at all, whilst 2.75 million people – mostly in rural areas - have broadband speeds of less than two Megabits per second (2Mbps).

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Towards a DFID Research policy on open access

The UK's Department for International Development (DFID) is a major funder of agricultural and development research. A recent news item in R4D reposrts that DFID "supports Open Access as a core component of its research commitment to ensure that research knowledge can be accessed, built upon and used in support of the objectives of the DFID Research Strategy."

A recent scoping study [by Peter Ballantyne] has looked at how DFID Research can develop an open access policy that will lead to greater public access to the research outputs it finances. Read the report 'Towards a DFID Research Policy on Open Access' and see the presentation based upon this report.

More: open access / see also CGIAR 'triple A' approach to these issues / CIARD - making research information truly accessile.

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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Digital divide would exacerbate in world regions and within countries.

An article in BroadBand Expert says that whilst there has been much talk about the digital divide in the UK between those with access to broadband Internet and those without, some industry officials believe that high speed internet will bring with it a new form of digital divide.

Concern over the digital divide that has been seen in the UK with regards to those able to access broadband internet and those unable to get adequate access to this service. It has mainly been rural areas where adequate access has been restricted and urban areas where there has been a greater level of access to broadband internet.

However, officials believe that the problem could continue even if the government is successful in bringing broadband access to all. Soome industry experts believe that despite these government efforts a new kind of digital divide is set to erupt in the UK over the coming years, and this will be between those able to access high speed Internet at speeds of 50Mbps or more and those only able to access the most basic broadband speeds. “Ultra broadband will exacerbate the digital divide among different world regions, as well as within countries. Governments in countries that lag behind in the deployment of ultra broadband will come under increasing pressure to use public funds to upgrade broadband infrastructure to avoid falling behind.", says an official in the article.

Major data contribution on Environment to WorldWideScience,org

Launching today, the UK will make its first major independent contribution of research data to the project with the upload of the Environment Research Funders’ Forum (ERFF) Research Database. The database holds information on some 20,000 publicly funded environmental research projects and programmes that have been funded by ERFF’s member organisations since 2005.

Www.worldwidescience.org offers researchers the ability to search over 50 national databases simultaneously, providing anyone interested in science with free access to quality, authoritative information on cutting edge scientific research.