FT reports on a rural broadband initiative in the UK. I’d love to see something like this being adopted in Ireland.

Not yet two years old, it is estimated to have brought in hundreds of thousands of pounds of investment by enabling entrepreneurs to thrive in areas that would have once been off limits, with 50,000 rural businesses now in reach of a fast internet connection.

Infrastructure investment is a mantra that has been heard from too long from the current Irish government. However, when it has come to prescient action, the efforts so far have look flat-footed and slow.

“We are levelling the playing field with urban areas,” said Andy Lister, marketing director of NYnet. Private companies have little incentive to build networks in sparsely populated areas and the costs for businesses increase the further they are from the exchange.