Virgin Media's snubbing of rural communities 'a travesty' says ex-BT CTO

Peter Cochrane claims 50 per cent ROI would be possible if providers did the maths

Virgin Media's failure to include rural areas in its £3bn broadband investment plans has angered campaigners, with former BT CTO and rural broadband champion Peter Cochrane dubbing the ongoing omission of the countryside from the rollout "a travesty".

Despite Prime Minister David Cameron - in the run-up to an election in which big business votes will be important to his party - welcoming the pledge of £3bn last week, Cochrane argued that the countryside's digital contribution to the economy is being severely underestimated.

"The big problem, always, for rural fast broadband is making a business case, and in a word, all the money's in separate purses," Cochrane told Computing this morning.

"So, no one is looking at this from a global persective."

"If you asked, ‘What would be the impact on the GDP of enabling the rural communities?', it turns out to be a big positive," he added.

Cochrane quoted an April 2012 blog by Cisco that reported 50 per cent returns in five years of widespread fibre to the home [FTTH], and believes a similar level of rollout in the UK would match this result.

"In every single region I go, people think the rural communities are farmers, but even farms have giant tractor rigs which require GPS and satellite imagining," he said.

"That aside, there a lot of other hi-tech industries in rural regions."

In the Suffolk village of Ufford - numbering 400 houses - in which he lives, Cochrane namechecked a "world famous designer of boats", a restorer of high-value vintage cars, an acoustics laboratory, as well as numerous artists who require the internet to sell their wares internationally. Ironically, a manufacturer of specialist optical fibre is also produced in the area.

"This is a vibrant economy. I would have thought that you get at least a 20-50 per cent payback on your investment as a nation," he continued.

Cochrane has appealed to BT directly in the past to simply bring optical fibre to the village, with "local geeks" volunteering to fit the rest free of charge for inhabitants, but to no avail.

"Somebody like Virgin could put a ‘village pump' [i.e. a hotspot] in and stand back and watch what happens", he said. Referring to Scandinavia's example again, he believes a fast broadband hotspot could simply be installed in the village, while locals work on the infrastructure.

"I think the UK has missed a big trick, because absolutely none of the BT UK funding has gone to the rural community - it's all gone to BT", he added.

"And this just seems to me to be a travesty. We put Wi-Fi in with no funding whatsoever, whereas BT wanted £140,000 to put fibre into the village. If Virgin are going to do anything radical, they could have done something like that."

Cochrane is also concerned that, with an ongoing emphasis on fibre to the cabinet [FTTC] rather than FTTH, "the big worry is the fantastic waste of money of putting in fibre to the cabinet with copper, and then in five years rip it all out and put in fibre to the home, and start all over again.

"They're doing the same job over and over. With fibre all the way, they'd be future proof. They could get that to the rural community first, and with consultancy, let the community do it themselves."