Picture: THE MODERN FARM LANDSCAPE - The Rice family are now enjoying high speed Internet access at their farm.
Ely Farm Benefits from High Speed Internet Access
A Cambridgeshire farmer who relies on daily Internet access - but has no chance of broadband - has overcome the problem by installing a high-speed satellite connection that allows him to download large
files and surf the net far more quickly.
Farming is now a global high tech business and modern day farmers
must have their fingers on the pulse. Edward Rice, of Bridge Farm in Prickwillow near Ely, subscribes to an online farming news service
that provides international crop prices, and downloads newsletters, health and safety reports and weather information, all of which impact on the day-to-day management of the farm.
After being told that BT had not created a trigger level for an ADSL roll-out to Prickwillow and there was no chance of a cable connection, Ed learned of the new Absolute AnyWhere solution from
Absolute Digital Systems. It is up to 20 times faster than a dial up connection and uses an ordinary satellite TV dish.
Edward said: "It has made a remarkable difference for downloading e-mails and has greatly reduced browsing time as pages that would
take a number of minutes for the images and text to load, now flash up instantly."
British Sugar pays Edward for the sugar content of his beet rather
than its weight. Previously, the reports took two weeks to arrive in the post, but now he checks prices online the day after sending his crop. He said: "This allows me to plan and budget. I also download updates from my grain and potato merchants and wheat prices are updated every hour which allows me to act on trends."
Many rural areas have no access to BT broadband. Despite promises to roll broadband out to 99% of the UK, trigger levels have been created for many villages, which means a certain amount of the population
must express an interest in taking up broadband, before BT will consider upgrading telephone exchanges.
A village such as Swavesey, north of Cambridge, which has about 1,000 homes has a trigger level of 500, which means half of those households would have to express an interest in broadband, before BT investigates it further. These triggers have been branded
unachievable by some communities and for even smaller villages such as Prickwillow, no trigger has been set, making the likelihood of broadband in the near future very unlikely.
Absolute Digital Systems, based at St John's Innovation Centre,
Cambridge, offers an alternative through its satellite system that
can be used by individual homes and businesses alike. The service is delivered via a normal TV satellite dish, working in conjunction with their existing dial up connection, e.g Freeserve. A minor adjustment can be made to existing satellite dishes for people who already have Sky television.
Ben Patterson, Product Director of Absolute, said: "There are many farmers that are frustrated at not being able to get broadband and businesses are suffering because they cannot receive large files.
Absolute AnyWhere offers an instant, proven to work solution and we can install within 10 business days."
Edward's wife Pat, a garden designer, also uses the internet to source materials and download plant photographs for work and their children Charlotte, 12, and nine-year-old Isabel love to play games and log onto their favourite BBC sites. It also allows the family to watch freeview channels on their PC such as CNN. Golf games that used to take Edward more than four hours to download, now take less then five minutes.
He added: "Absolute AnyWhere makes going online more efficient for our business needs and our surfing time much more enjoyable."
