Only connect

ANYONE supposing that fast broadband facilities represent some sort of luxury should experience life in a rural business. As more and more business is done online, those in rural areas where internet connections are often ponderous in the extreme, and telephone-linequality can be so poor that it struggles to support even dial-up connections, are facing a daily battle to stay competitive.

This is why a delegation of MPs from North Yorkshire, England's most rural county, is calling on Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to include

the county among the pilot schemes for so-called superfast connections due to be announced before the end of the year.

With the Government supposedly committed to the countryside, and considering that the Prime Minister has promised that Yorkshire will not suffer disproportionately in the cutbacks to come, a superfast roll-out in North Yorkshire would not only boost rural business, it would also go a long way towards demonstrating that the new administration is one that will keep its word.