On Tuesday evening Purbeck District Council will vote on whether they should contribute £360,000 towards a £9.7M joint Dorset County Council/British Telecom initiative to install high speed fibre optic broadband across Dorset. It is my understanding that £330,000 of this money is already available as part of a grant from central government, therefore only about £30K needs to be contributed by PDC. If Purbeck District Council does not contribute then we will be left in the slow lane of the communication age. If PDC does contribute there would be a huge opportunity to create new internet based jobs across the District, and particularly in Swanage.
There will be an allotted 15 minutes for public participation before the Council meeting begins for members of the public to explain to councillors why it is so important that this contribution be made. Please come to the meeting at the District Council Offices in Worgret Road, Wareham, on Tuesday the 13th December. The meeting starts at 7pm.
Posted by Stephen Foote
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Get's my vote. After several good weeks my broadband performance has been awful this weekend. Has anyone else had problems?
My broadband is excellent and I think this money would be better spent elsewhere.
Is there anyway of commenting on this to PDC without attending the meeting?
My broadband is excellent and I think this money would be better spent elsewhere.
11/12/11 10:53 PM
Are you running a business and if so do you depend on the internet? You are very lucky if your broadband provision is excellent. I even had problems responding on this blog.
Will this give video on demand, more HD TV stations, a better phone line etc too?
http://www.dorsetforyou.com/media.jsp?mediaid=168170&filetype=pdf
My broadband is excellent and I think this money would be better spent elsewhere.
Let me ask this question: If you drive from London to London, do you use the motorway or the B roads? I suspect the answer is the former rather than the latter because the motorway is quicker and cheaper and more efficient (even though the B roads may be more picturesque. High speed broadband is like that motorway, and if we have it in Purbeck it opens up virtually limitless possibilities.
Computers and broadband are the new industrial revolution, and in the same way that the railway changed Swanage a hundred years ago, the high speed broadband link could do the same thing in the 21st century. Without it we would be consigning ourselves to the dark ages of the communication age.
Perhaps you were satisfied with dial-up internet when that was around. It was certainly amazing when I first used it. As more and more people use the internet, and more and more services become available on the internet we have will slow down to a point where it is like dial-up again. We need to increase the capacity we have, and to do that we need high speed. In that way local businesses can expand because they can communicate efficiently with their customers. This is a good thing for jobs, as it would attract business into Swanage, and possibly the type of business which would be good for Swanage as it would involve less travel. The list of benefits is endless, and I believe it is a vital investment.
I'm sure others will disagree.... lets debate it
Sorry in Para one of the last post it should have read "if you want to drive from Swanage to London....
(of course you can drive from London to London on the M25, but that really isn't any fun at all...)
If £5+m can be found to do up Durlston Castle and £10M so we can get a steam train to Wareham surely we can afford high speed broadband?
High speed broadband is now a must to run a business if most of your sales are done over the net. So surely Swanage must move ahead and have the upgrades done:)
Charlie The Bikemonger here... Straight to the facts...
Swanage gets a local bike shop facility because we do 98% of our business online. We have more customers in Spain (insert any other European country) than Purbeck. There is not enough cycle business in Swanage to pay the electricity bill, let alone pay staff.
At 3.30pm most days our broadband drops to a level where we can no longer work, we cannot take card payments in store, we cannot download sales data, and we cannot upload stock. We are effectively closed.
As a local business we employ people, spend our money locally, my car is repaired at the local garage, my food is purchased locally, our children go to local schools. We are part of the community.
If we don’t get better broadband, I will be FORCED to shut the shop, and relocate my business, and maybe my home too. I cannot be competitive with poor broadband.
Quality broadband will allow the creation of jobs in Purbeck. High speed broadband is as important as the sandbanks ferry, and the A351.
The District council has plans to build 900 NEW HOMES IN SWANAGE. But has made no provision for employment. There appears to be a lack of joined up thinking here, a clashing of decisions, some pretty damned short sighted views.
*** Any councillors who are opposed to high speed broadband are fundamentally opposed to the welfare of Swanage ***
If anyone has the time, might be worth emailing each of the councillors with your views. You can get their details on http://www.dorsetforyou.com/districtcouncillors/purbeck
Here are the email addresses for all PDC councillors:
d.a.budd@dorsetcc.gov.uk, Cllr.Barnes@purbeck-dc.gov.uk, Cllr.Cake@purbeck-dc.gov.uk, martyn@colvey.tv, Cllr.Critchley@purbeck-dc.gov.uk, Cllr.Dragon@purbeck-dc.gov.uk, f.h.drane@dorsetcc.gov.uk, srbgoldsack@aol.com, Cllr.Green@purbeck-dc.gov.uk, Graham30kwk@talktalk.net, paul.johns12@btinternet.com, mwjlovell@gmail.com, Cllr.Marsh@purbeck-dc.gov.uk, cllrosmond@gmail.com, ali@patrickswanage.co.uk, magpiebillpipe@freeuk.com, Marmike24@hotmail.com, Cllr.Quinn@purbeck-dc.gov.uk, Cllr.WStarr@purbeck-dc.gov.uk, gary.suttle@gmsuttle.co.uk, swanbase.w@virgin.net, Peter4Lytchett@gmail.com, peter.wharf@btopenworld.com
its damn slow today. We need BB to earn money so lets improve it.
We are part of the community.
If we don’t get better broadband, I will be FORCED to shut the shop, and relocate my business, and maybe my home too. I cannot be competitive with poor broadband.
Sorry but if you have more business from abroad than from Purbeck why would we be worried if you have to relocate? Maybe it would be more convienient for you?
12/12/11 3:35 PM you're missing the point. What Charliethebikemonger demonstrates is the importance of top quality high speed broadband for ANY business: say hotels or restaurants trying to take bookings, say a web designer trying to upload material.. Let alone ordinary people trying to download large files (as is becoming increasingly usual).Do I need to go on?
No Mike,Let the Gentleman have his dial up, those who need it (lots of us) can have the fibre
Anonymous said (anonymously?)...
"Sorry but if you have more business from abroad than from Purbeck why would we be worried if you have to relocate? Maybe it would be more convienient for you?".
You have missed the point. Or I simply do not understand your point.
Why would moving a home and a business be convenient?
My point is... I should not have to relocate. I don’t want to relocate. I don’t want to leave Swanage, my kids don’t want to move schools and I don’t want my staff to be forced to move or lose their jobs. But there comes a point where the value lost through the poor broadband exceeds the relocation cost. My preferred and most convenient option is for Purbeck to have a modern broad band facility.
Consider the consequences of my business leaving town:
3.5 less jobs in Swanage. The business is growing, so that could be 6 next year.
Two less children at local schools, less children = schools more likely to close
One house on the market = one less family and maybe another second home.
Less money being spent with local businesses = less money in local community, less opportunity for jobs,
One more empty shop.
Cyclists would be looking at 20 mile round trips to fix a puncture.
I am one small business, but there are many more in similar situations locally. If the business community is not provided with the facilities it needs, they have to move... Chococo, a successful local business that is now based in....?
While I agree with Charlie whole heartedly, how can he employ 3.5 people?
Of course I realise one is probably part time, hence the 0.5, I'm just making a bad attempt at humour.
3.5 people is me, Mrs Bikemonger (behind the scenes stuff), Simon (the shop human), and we have a staurday boy.... so probably nearer 3.08 people.
We also have support business's helping us such as the swanage post office, the deli, red lion, purbeck electrical, local tradesmen, and our wheel builder. We all help each other, its all money whizzing around our local economy.
The bigger plan is more space, more people, and to really go at the webside of the business. But if we have 4 PCs going hard all day... it wont work in Swanage. 2 maxes out our broadband.
All the best
Charlie
Q. Chococo, a successful local business that is now based in....?
A. ....Swanage, with a manufacturing facility in Wareham.
Is the BB better/faster in Wareham?
Is BB better in Wareham?
Could be. When the fibre optic was laid all along the S coast it got to Wareham, but not to Swanage.
Charlie I'd be interested to know how much bandwidth you use in a month?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-16155301
About 30,000 more homes and businesses in Dorset are to get super-fast broadband, BT has announced.
Dorchester, Poole and Ferndown are the latest towns to be included the company's £2.5bn national super-fast fibre broadband programme.
They will be upgraded to speeds of up to 300Mbps by spring, the firms says. Ofcom say the average actual speed of all UK broadband is 6.8Mbps.
Dorchester councillor, Richard Biggs, said he was "delighted".
"This is great news for Dorchester's businesses and residents alike, who will be able to use IT applications for work and leisure in the same way as people in the major cities across Britain and the world," he said.
The broadband services are also in place in Wimborne, Boscombe, Bournemouth, Weymouth, Portland, Blandford, Lytchett Minster, Verwood and Broadstone.
[Let's hope we don't miss out]
I live in Steeple and recently have been getiing a max of 0.4 mbps, I pay BT £20 a month for a 40gb download limit, it would take me more than a month to download that amount of data at my speed. I cannot download films or video clips. I have recently moved to the area and it took me six weeks to get a phone line from BT as they wanted me to pay £100,000 for the pleasure!! Hence I did not pay, complained constantly and eventually got the line free of charge!!!!
Borrow a Three dongle from someone and see what speed you get in Steeple. It is quite fast in Swanage. Fifteen quid a month for unlimited use. I can stream Youtubes quite well.
Its a no brainer. £30,000 well spent to help local businesses survive, prosper and encourage more to come along.
so what happened at the meeting?
It was approved! So with any luck, within two years we will have super fast broadband in Swanage!
It's great that it was approved. Does anyone know if this will cover ALL of Purbeck, or just selected areas?
Great news will the Corfe Valley villages of Church Knowle, Steeple & Kimmeridge get some attention as we suffer from the worst speeds???
For more detailed information regarding superfast broadband provision in Purbeck I think it would be best to contact Phil Mc Straw who is the General Manager - Central Services at Purbeck District Council.
Very slow broadband today, the worst I've known in four years.
I look forward to 'super-fast'.
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