The people of rural Britain are getting fed up….As if slow, or non-existent broadband wasn’t bad enough because of long line lengths and decaying old copper wires, going mobile isn’t even an option to them like it is for urbanites. That’s right, the price you pay for living in the beautiful British countryside is a lack of decent broadband speed or mobile phone services.

Now, I know that all of the network operators will argue that they are trying to address this, but let’s face it, they won’t do it properly, because there is simply not enough people living in the country who are willing to pay for their services. And if there isn’t enough paying customers, they’ll never recoup their massive investment required for providing their services, let alone make a profit.

So, advisory group, The Communications Consumer Panel, has come up with a possible solution. It is urging the regulator Ofcom to force operators to extend services to rural areas and upgrade rural coverage with the proceeds of the upcoming 4G mobile auction. For those that don’t know, 4G is the next-generation for mobile services, offering faster speeds, which is crucial as more people use smartphones to surf the web – something which the mobile operators are keen to capitalise on and will, no doubt, pay handsomely for the privilege of securing one of the licences.

It is estimated that three million people live in mobile “not-spots”. The 4G auctions begin next year with services likely to start rolling out from 2013.

Given that the last government wanted to tax everybody 50p per month to fund the roll out of broadband to rural areas, funding the upgrade of our country’s communications infrastructure with the proceeds of the 4G auction sounds like a great idea and deserves serious consideration.

Here at 08direct.co.uk we spend our days trying to find new ways of bringing high-end technology to small businesses, so we’re fully supportive of any move that gets more people and businesses online and able to take advantage of all the amazing technology we have at our disposal.