Europe Takes an Interest

Sitting in the digital desert of south Wiltshire it's often easy to think that Winterbourne Stoke, and other villages like us around the UK, are very much on our own when it comes to trying to improve our broadband access.

It seems that we may have been mistaken!

During the course of putting a bid together for a small slice of some South West Regional Development Agency funding for rural broadband improvements, we've been in touch with a series of very helpful and delightful people both locally, nationally and now internationally.

Some public "thank yous" are in order for the help, advice and encouragement we have received from these quarters: Vtesse Networks, the Regeneration Manager from Wiltshire Council and the South Wiltshire Economic Partnership in particular.

Stonehenge Broadband, our community broadband group, has also received a little publicity, with radio interviews on Spire FM and BBC Wiltshire Sound. The latter one was recorded by Graham Watson the Lib-Dem MEP for the South West. It came as a bit of a surprise for us to discover that the interview hadn't arisen locally, but had been produced by an organisation called Quadrant European Parliament Radio Reports based in Brussels. They provide a free service, funded by the European Parliament, to independent and BBC radio stations in the UK.

Late last week, they also recorded a video interview regarding the issues here in Winterbourne Stoke and the attempts to improve things. Amazing it worked at all given the speed of connections here and a power-cut that threatened to stop the whole thing altogether. As soon as we have a link, we'll post it.

It's encouraging to know that a small community like ours can create a few ripples as far away as Brussels - perhaps the similarity between the Europarl logo and the Stonehenge circles is more than just coincidence.