£57m Welsh Broadband Announcement should bring joy, not fear

July 13, 2011 - PRLog -- Today's announcement by Jeremy Hunt (secretary of state for culture, Olympics, media and sport), heralds more than 10% of Westminster's declared budget to be heading towards Wales.  Secretary of state for Wales (Cheryl Gillan) is reported as saying:

   "I am delighted with this announcement...ensuring Wales has the infrastructure it needs to grow"

Richard Brown (COO at Wispa Limited), is not as upbeat:

   "It would be truly fantastic if the money allocated today were going to change our nation - but the aspiration is 90% of the population in the UK to have superfast broadband by 2015 and everyone else to get at least 2Mbps - Wales will be in the latter category,"

he continued:

   "In Wales we lack the ambition, drive and policy to make sure that our nation will be in the 90%, and this is made clear by the failure of the Welsh Government to increase the minimum speeds that providers have to deliver in order to allow the subscriber to qualify for grant support."

Brown's reference, is to the Broadband Support Scheme that saw a lowering of the threshold for qualification to sub-2Mbps, but no increase to the minimum service requirement.  As such someone with 1.99mbps would qualify for the grant, and the service provider would only need to provide a (upto) 2Mbps service, offering dismal value for money, and wasting the opportunity to force the delivery network in Wales up to the national average (6.2Mbps according to Ofcom).

   "Without a better view of the future, it is fairly obvious that Wales is destined to become the online village idiot.  Tourists demand connectivity these days; businesses require faster speeds and our children need good quality broadband,"
explained Brown.

As part of the recent Ofcom interactive broadband map, Wales was highlighted as being almost universally poorly served for broadband, and Wispa Limited are absolutely clear that this does not appear to have any likliehood of changing.

Brown stated:

   "If Wales want to have a nation that can compete - retain entrepreneurs - develop business - aid our children and attract tourists then the Welsh Government have to get more ambitious; more demanding; and be much more commercially savvy than it looks like they are able to be."

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Wispa Limited is a UK registered company and is not associated with the self appointed 'industry body' of two ISP's that use the same name.

Wispa Limited
Orchard Barn
Sarn
Powys
SY16 4EP
0844 884 2233
http://wispa.me
admin@wispa.it

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Started by Welsh Broadband industry professional Richard Brown (previously a founding director of exwavia Limited).