Getting Farmers Online By Roger Boddy, CEO, Global Teleports
I am as frustrated as everyone when I see the constant stream of disappointments with broadband provision in this country. Those residents and businesses in rural areas are getting a raw deal, with often little or no connection and seemingly no means of getting connected without huge sums of investment.
As with every sector, farming businesses often rely on the Internet to connect them with potential customers. Often fraught with poor mobile signal as well, the lack of broadband is really starting to hurt those businesses in the broadband dark spots.
However, in all the talk of ensuring better broadband, the piece of the puzzle that is inherently missing is satellite. Satellite broadband has a bad press, with many consumers shying away from it for fear of an unreliable service or the need for extremely deep pockets. I’ll be the first to admit that satellite broadband used to be ridiculously expensive and not as reliable or fast as its counterparts. The situation was exacerbated by an influx of providers who saw fit to overloading satellites thus delivering poor connections to all of their customers.
Yet, satellite technology has actually developed at an astounding rate over the past couple of years and whilst those fears would have been well founded before these developments, it is simply no longer the case.
A new breed of satellite technology has made a number of improvements for consumers. Firstly, this technology makes it possible to achieve good connections from equipment that is both cost-effective to purchase and much smaller than ever before. Secondly, the technology is able to exchange lots more data using much less bandwidth, which means the monthly cost is drastically reduced and systems are much easier to install then ever before, meaning you no longer need extensive training or a team of installers to get you setup; and finally, there has been a major change in the way satellite services are sold with tariffs now focussed on throughput (how much you use) rather than the transmission speed (how much bandwidth is required) which means that you only pay for what you use rather than having to pay for unused bandwidth.
So, whilst there are outcries across the country of “where is our superfast broadband?” there really is already a solution, which covers the entire UK and can give users reliable fast and superfast broadband at a price to suit any pocket.