After so many years pointing, prodding and cajoling to put the 4th Utility onto the public agenda, it seems that finally the importance of connectivity is being recognised across all of society eg HRH Prince Charles in Friday’s Telegraph

What is particularly important about HRH Prince Charles’ intervention is the focus it gives to the particular issues faced by rural communities.

Unfortunately referred to in some less enlightened (sic) quarters as the Last Third, here at FibreStream we champion the cause of the First Third -

First in terms of current need due to poor to non-existent connectivity today.

First due to lack of services and amenities in rural areas, people living outside the cities have to incur much higher costs for travel in terms of cash for fuel and time wasted.

At a CVON-interim meeting I was kindly invited to speak at last week - at the  the invite of Richard Hull – there was a great example of a core team of community champions and ambassodors who get the key fact about NGA connectivity  – the opportunity to reshape the terms of trade  in the interests of their local community putting people first over telco profits by becoming their own telco 2.0 (or telco 3.0 perhaps…)

In cooperation and with approval of CVON-Interim, some excellent open source consultancy is available at Fibrevolution.com

And again in the Times today, more interesting direction from Nick Appleyard and the TSB team - here’s my comment reposted:

Through the work that FibreStream and NextGenUs do in the NGA space, I know of enough communities in England, Scotland and Wales already underway with NGA to fulfil Nick’s requirement several times over.

Maybe just maybe the UK will be amongst the world NGA leaders by 2012 – and that means 1Gbps (1000 Mbps) both ways to the Home