Geoff Gets UK NGA

(Original version posted at www.nextgenus.net)

Thanks to Lindsey Annison’s pointer, here is an excellent blog post from Geoff Daily at App Rising on both the problem and solution for fixing fixed NGA for the UK

Well said Geoff! – you go right to the heart of both the UK NGA problem and point to a key part of the solution.

An option for SMART government intervention, maximum bank for buck, is to act as underwriter for that most local level of democracy and taxation, the Parish Council.

Parish Councils can levy precepts for the provision or upkeep of services in the common good.

A century ago, Parish Councils were instrumental in pioneering the provision of utility services we now take for granted e.g. piped water, electricity.

NGA is the 4th Utility, so it follows that there is a 21st Century role for the Parish Council Precept (PCP).

The challenge for local communities, across a patchwork of perhaps 15,000 localities spread across the UK in predominantly-rural areas, is how to make the significant CAPEX costs involved with FiWi deployment digestible for the local community.

By underwriting centrally, the Westminster Government could simply enable each Parish Council to spread this CAPEX over a decade or two, rather than a year or two.

County Councils are the obvious and natural choice as intermediaries in this process

- John Marsden, until recently Chief Executive of North Yorkshire County Council, acted to test the subsidiarity proposition that Parish Councils are best placed to determine (and also reinvigorated by) local solutions, which in turn resulted in the successful NextGenUs NandS NGA FiWi project in Newton & Stape in the North Yorkshire Moors.

The incoming Government, particularly Dr Vince Cable (BIS) and Mr Ed Vaisey (Broadband), has a golden opportunity here:

Combine this PCP funded approach with Government action in directing the £200M (perhaps still ring-fenced from the Digital Switchover fund?) available for the “2Mbps USC by 2012″ Digital Britain Report deliverable into making available Digital Village Pumps (Isenberg’s Dumb Fat Pipes) and achieving the Final Third First is now within reach.

Also posted on www.fibrestream.co.uk