We’re in the 5%
Around 5% of the UK isn’t covered in existing national fibre broadband rollout plans and Westfield Parish falls into that group. The Parish Council knows the difficulties people have had with so many more people recently working from home, trying to home school, having zoom calls and generally having more people using broadband at the same time.
This scheme will provide a service which gets rid of those slow website downloads, which will give glitch-free streaming of teachers’ lessons, business meetings, films, TV programmes and games. It will give you fast, trouble-free Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp or Teams meetings with work colleagues and your distant family members! It will facilitate all the computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs and games machines and wi-fi that you have in your household to actually perform as they are supposed to.
Superfast broadband could increase your house price, or decrease it if you don’t have it
A survey carried out by ispreview.co.uk found that 68.8% of respondents would be put off from buying a “beautiful new house” if it lacked fast broadband. 73.9% considered that broadband was “critically important” to their home life. Since this survey was conducted, the importance of broadband connectivity has increased further. Rightmove now have a ”broadband speed checker” when people are buying properties so it really does count.
We need superfast broadband to support the demand for internet in home and in businesses. More and more people need better and more reliant broadband for:
- mobile phones
- iPads and tablets
- notebooks
- e-readers (such as Kindle)
- desktop PCs
- games consoles
- Apple TV and media players
- Sky+ boxes
- streamed video services, such as YouTube,
- Netflix, BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, NowTV,
- streamed music services, such as Spotify
Without superfast broadband, residents have an increasingly reduced set of online services to choose from.
Full Regeneris Report on the Impact of High-Speed Broadband for Communities
Westfield Parish Council 