Broadband blues?

We are lucky in Newmans Green because we are relatively close to the Sudbury telephone exchange and therefore receive a reasonable broadband signal.  I know that this is not the case across Waldingfield Ward as a whole however.

It is therefore encouraging to receive the communication below from the County Council, inviting those with internet access problems to make this known by completing a short survey.

The message, for which I am indebted to David,  the Champion Silver Surfer of Cockfield, reads as follows:

‘You may have noticed in the media that the Suffolk Better Broadband Programme is gathering pace, and we hope to start work on improving services with Suffolk in Autumn this year.  Before we start work, we have to go through a public procurement process to select a provider to develop the Suffolk network.

 In order to make this contract as attractive as possible to bidders, as well as to provide evidence to use as leverage during negotiations, we are asking households to register their demand for broadband.  This will make our case as strong as possible.  Not only will this aid the procurement process, but it will also inform us of where the areas of particular need exist across Suffolk.

 The survey only takes a few minutes to complete, and can be found at www.suffolk.gov.uk/broadband.  If you could use your channels to promote this as much as possible, it would be fantastic.  Ideally we want to get the message to all households in all parishes, that their input via this survey will be critical to improving broadband in Suffolk.

 We have also produced a hard copy of this survey.  The idea here is that any willing volunteers can distribute and collect responses, catering for those who do not have access to the online version.  In addition to these we plan to distribute hard copies via libraries, and brief library staff on the online process, to make it as accessible as possible to all.

 Responses are really needed in time to inform our planning, which means to end of March is when we will need to start reviewing responses.

 A lot of background information to the programme, including a summary of our plan, monthly newsletters, and a FAQ page also appears on www.suffolk.gov.uk/broadband’