Residents of a Welsh village with no broadband and no mobile coverage who were recently cut off from the UK after their landlines failed are rejoicing after new superfast internet was finally installed.
In the summer of 2015, Staylittle, an isolated village west of Newtown in Powys and known as Penffordd las in Welsh, experienced a communications black-out for nearly two weeks.
There was no mobile signal, and with the nearest town located around eight miles away, Staylittle residents relied on one working landline in the local Post Office to keep in touch with family, friends and customers.
Becky Williams, a Staylittle resident who runs Kids Closet, a children’s clothing company, said the mobile internet access provided by the new 4G mast has already made a big difference to the local community.
“We’re all very happy to be able to connect online with our family and friends – a luxury that is often taken for granted elsewhere in the UK,” she said.
Russell George, Assembly Member for Montgomeryshire and Chair of the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee, said the new access was, “a huge, positive change for the village - a change that is guaranteed to improve the lives of those living in Staylittle”.
Brendan O’Reilly, chief technology officer at O2, which built the mast, described it as a “memorable achievement”.
Staylittle’s struggle for communication links is indicative of a wider problem highlighted by a recent Local Government Association and Public Health England report.
It found that rural communities are being neglected, resulting in increasing digital exclusion and a breakdown in social networks and transport links.
The view that people who live in the countryside are rich and enjoy a rural idyll masks pockets of deprivation and poor health — both of which have been exacerbated by lack of access to the Internet — according to the study.
Crucially, a combination of an older population and the unavailability of high-speed broadband has led to a growing digital gap between urban and rural areas, which is enhancing loneliness among the elderly and preventing people from accessing the best healthcare, the report went on.
O2 said 400 more Welsh villages will benefit from improvements to its rural network coverage from now until the end of the year.
O2 has been working to catch up on rival EE. A recent study of 4G coverage in the UK by statistics from RootMetrics found that, in cities, EE delivered at least 90 per cent coverage in 11 of the 14 areas studied. O2 and Vodafone only hit the 90 per cent mark in three areas.
