New broadband satellite offers hope to rural areas - Telegraph

New broadband satellite offers hope to rural areas - Telegraph

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that a universal 2mbps service will be available across the UK by 2015. Although fixed-line broadband is the preferred option, for the most rural 10 per cent of the country it is thought that only mobile or satellite broadband services will be economically viable in the near future.
Satellite broadband is already popular in remote areas of Scotland, where Avanti has 200,000 customers. While the service cannot match the speeds of fixed-services because of the distances involved, in many locations it represents the only available option. Increasingly, however, rural communities have found ways to persuade companies to extend broadband, either through grants or raising their own contributions. A £132 million European Union grant for Cornwall and the south-west is currently being spent on providing broadband at speeds of up to 100 mbps