The situation is similar across Europe. Workers in large cities face long and stressful commutes, high housing costs, pollution, and difficulty finding schools for their children.
Meanwhile, authorities in many rural areas are struggling to keep their communities alive as young people leave to work in major cities. The result is a downward spiral of services and infrastructure in rural areas, which in turn exacerbates the challenge of providing services to an aging population.
The danger is that large cities will prosper at the expense of rural communities—a scenario few governments or voters consider politically acceptable. However, the current economic climate is not conducive to large-scale investments in education, healthcare, and transportation services for sparsely populated communities. For this reason, a growing number of governments worldwide see very high-speed broadband infrastructure as the most affordable way to deliver services that will revitalize rural areas. Thousands of attendees will discuss this issue during the Open Days – European Week of Regions and Cities, held in Brussels from October 10–13. When they talk about investing in the future of the continent, the Digital Agenda for Europe will be a key topic.
Government incentives.
These discussions will almost certainly include the European Commission's new plans to allocate more than €9 billion to broadband in the new EU budget for 2014-2020.
With fiber optic networks in place, businesses and teleworkers in rural areas can work efficiently with clients around the world, just as they would from an office in a major city.
In addition, very high-speed Fiber to the Home (FTTH) networks make it possible to offer a wide range of public and cultural services in rural areas, such as movies, sporting events, education, health, or video-based social networks.
In fact, policymakers recognize that access to very high-speed broadband is as essential to economic development as roads, electricity, or water.
The UK, Italy, France, and Portugal are among the European countries contributing to facilitating and funding the nationwide rollout of very high-speed broadband. Municipalities and energy companies in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, and other countries have already launched their own initiatives to make fiber networks available to consumers and businesses in rural areas.
New Business Models
Although very high-speed broadband is useful for all sectors of society, its benefits are greatest in rural areas. A study by the FTTH Council Europe has unequivocally confirmed this.[1] However, operators are eager to compete to build high-speed broadband networks in large, densely populated cities, where both broadband infrastructure and a wealth of cultural activities already exist. In contrast, residents of towns and villages in rural areas often have to choose between a low-quality copper wire connection or a mobile network. Therefore, any FTTH provider in rural areas is likely to enjoy a high adoption rate and a rapid takeoff of services, whether television, HD movie downloads, or health and community services, especially if they are prepared to adopt alternative business models.
In Norway, a regional energy supplier, Lyse, created a subsidiary called Altibox in 2002 to provide fiber optic internet to homes, including groups of 300 or 400 houses in rural areas. Altibox, which reduces connection costs by allowing customers to dig their own trenches, now holds 13.4% of the total broadband market in Norway and has a penetration rate of around 70% in homes with fiber optic access.
Another advantage of very high-speed broadband in rural areas is that it allows governments to rethink how they deliver public services. Existing applications in Sweden, for example, show how patients can use fiber-to-the-home networks to consult remotely with nurses, reducing the need for long and expensive journeys to distant hospitals.
Technology Job Creation in Rural Areas:
The town of Hudiksvall in northern Sweden illustrates the tangible economic and social benefits of deploying FTTH networks in rural communities. Faced with population decline, this community opted in 2004 to establish FTTH networks as a way to attract companies that create jobs and provide services. The result has been an annual increase of between 6% and 14% in the number of new businesses in the region, as well as the establishment of a new research center for the Swedish research institute ACREO. In France, the city of Pau completed the deployment of an FTTH network in 2005, which has helped create more than 800 new jobs and attracted the International School of Information Processing Sciences (EISTI), which has built a campus in the city. (CONECtrónica No. 148, June 2011, pp. 14-15).
In both cases, local governments intervened to encourage the deployment of FTTH networks. Policymakers have realized that they cannot leave FTTH deployment to market forces, as these focus their investments on very high-speed broadband networks located in large cities. However, any government investing public funds in very high-speed broadband must avoid the temptation to adopt stopgap solutions.
Some governments are trying to use the wireless spectrum freed up by the switch from analog to digital television to provide broadband in rural areas. However, choosing wireless technology to mitigate the risks of the digital divide puts rural populations at a disadvantage. The capacity of wireless networks is inherently limited, which will likely restrict the provision of education, healthcare, and other social services in the future. Furthermore, knowledge workers are likely to think twice before relocating to areas that only offer wireless broadband. Today, governments and the private sector are evaluating how to extend high-speed broadband infrastructure nationwide. However, their choice is simpler than it seems. Making the right investments in broadband networks can create new lifestyle options for city dwellers and stimulate rural economies. Only FTTH, with its virtually unlimited capacity, is capable of achieving this.
Do we want a Europe of more prosperous regions or a Europe of large cities?
Many of the decisions about the development of regions in Europe are being made now: the new EU budget for 2014-2020 is being planned and negotiated during the Open Days and throughout the coming months. Unequivocal declarations in favor of strong budgetary support for rural areas and a clear focus on fiber optic access will be the tools to ensure that rural Europe remains competitive and successful. The Open Days taking place in Brussels bring together several thousand participants from different European countries to discuss the impact of the Digital Agenda on rural areas.
The outcome should be a clear commitment to regions, and not settling for 1, 6, 10, or 30 Mbps! Rural areas have the right to be connected just as much as city dwellers through a technology—fiber to the home—that guarantees the future.
Author: FTTH Council Europe
