Interview with ISP Avanti UK and its Rural Satellite Broadband Plans

Earlier this year Lord Stephen Carter, better known as the governments first Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting, published his first interim Digital Britain report outlining the need for a new digital Universal Service Commitment/Obligation (related news). The new USO had several aims, not least to make broadband capable of 2Mbps available to everybody in the country by 2012. This would be no easy task, especially with BT’s own figures showing that roughly 7% of the country could not achieve such speeds via existing land lines.

Since then the race has been on to find viable technological solutions for bridging this largely rural digital speed divide. Upgrades to existing telephone lines, new wireless (Wi-Fi, WiMax) networks and Mobile Broadband services are all under consideration. There is also one broadband technology that can already achieve such a feat, satellite.