Digital Divide faced by Rural Businesses and Organisations  

Question: Are businesses and organisations really benefitting from technology (telecommunications) in rural areas?

Answer: Contrary to popular belief the honest answer is no they are not, and we shall outline some observations gathered from decades of being in the technology sector and present options.

The “digital divide” has been in place since the mid-1990’s and is still very much a real barrier today for a large amount of the UK’s rural communities and businesses. Just think about that for a moment there has been a quantifiable difference in the quantity and quality of technology availability for over 30 years, and successive governments and initiatives have done very little to remove or close the gap. The response from the technology “industry” is even more damning because they have always put profits before people and unless there was significant investment available from central government then they never looked at expanding technology outside of the cities. This means that pretty much the entire rural environment has made do with third rate infrastructure to operate their livelihoods over.

Things have become marginally improved over the last few years and mobile coverage and fibre connectivity are now creeping ever further into the rural domain but it is a slow process.   Even with this improvement the smart money is on there still being a considerable drop off between urban and rural locations. The image in figure 1 below was sourced from the House of Commons archives and provides a good indicator of how things are today even with the investments that have taken place.

Now the whole world got really pumped over the latest telecoms platform set to revolutionise the way we all communicate – 5G was going to allow us to have a shave on top of a mountain in Wales conducted by someone in the USA. The hype far outweighed the actual realities and capabilities of the commercial mobile network offerings; even in the urban areas the rollout of “true” 5G networks has been slow so just imagine the reality of those networks reaching the rural areas of the country. 5G networks require a massive investment to make them happen and this is not just about putting up new antennas, to build a 5G network requires fibre, power and much more to create the new platform.

Figure 2 shows the likelihood of exclusion to good quality broadband. Quite a sobering thing to take on board. Unless you are in one of the major urbanisations in the UK there is a real risk you are going to be underserved in your telecom needs.

Facing these barriers, is there little wonder that rural communities and businesses feel that they have been forgotten by successive governments and organisations providing services? The big problem for everyone operating a business in the rural domain is that more and more of everyday services and 3rd party organisations now use increasing reliance on online services and tools to capture data. This includes everything from tax returns through to livestock records for DEFRA and ordering vital supplies to keep your business moving forward. It doesn’t stop there either the machinery that you use to conduct your work is also requiring connectivity so that it can send diagnostic data back to the manufacturer so that your tools can be maintained and avoidance of downtime due to malfunction can be decreased.

After reading the first statements you could easily form an opinion that technology and the benefits it brings are out of reach for rural entities, however you’d be wrong.  At C3R Technologies we pride ourselves on being able to bring technology to the rural environment and people who work and live there.

We don’t just say this but we have actually done this for ourselves at our North Yorkshire farm. We have built a demonstration facility that has the latest technology installed:

• The very latest standard Wi-Fi network installed to provide data connectivity around the entire working yard area of the farm
• IoT(sensors) and A.I.(analytical data capture & reporting) providing 24×7 monitoring of our power consumption, air/environmental quality and perimeter security monitoring to name but a few

• Integrated CCTV that is linked to the security sensors

• Satellite backhaul as there is no broadband connection available from any supplier

• All applications hosted on the Cloud so full access to authorised persons from anywhere on the planet

These are the exact same technologies that we can bring to your locations and organisations to give the digital connectivity and bring efficiencies and security that are denied due to your location.

These demonstration technologies are just a snapshot of what C3R Technologies can bring to assist your business/organisation to benefit from, if it can be monitored it can be measured.

Want to find out more or a book a live demonstration then please contact us via our web pages www.c3rtechnologies.com or email us at hello@c3rtechnologies.com or call +44 3330 386 878.

Let us help you reap the benefits of using the right technology for the right scenario.

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