I spent a few days during Easter in the country side. I stayed in a small town where a big battle was fought 2.500 years ago, Marathon.
The town is less than an hour drive, north east from the capital and lies just outside the new real estate Greenfield development of the metropolitan area of Athens. It is mainly an agricultural area, at least it is now.
I had the chance to speak with the local people and enjoy the conversations. I realized how different they are from broadband-centric people like myself. They simply do not care about broadband (some of them haven’t even heard about it), facebook, twitter, fiber-enabled economy and the like. These people value more the personal communication than my smart phone, they value more their music tapes than my mp3s.
They prefer to visit and negotiate with the merchants face-to-face than to go online to buy goods. They don’t login to find new friends, they go to the town square and meet them there. It’s hard to explain competitiveness, productivity, digital economy, not to mention mobility and fast internet access.
So that makes me wonder. What is the nature of the digital gap between rural and urban areas, that everyone likes to have an opinion about? It seems that it is not about providing different digital opportunities to urban vis-à-vis rural areas, and it is certainly not about broadband availability. It is more about the social and economic priorities of the “underserved” areas. People in rural areas understand differently innovation, competitiveness and economic growth. They understand differently socio-economic needs and requirements.
Does this mean that they should not using broadband or that they should not benefit from access to the digital economy? No, not at all, but the question is how can someone demonstrate the benefits of broadband. What vocabulary canbe used? “€30 all you can eat” offers do not tell them much. IPTV does not tell them much either, they have about 20 free air channels, they don’t need 80 more; who’s going to watch them and when, anyway! But, think for a moment: what if farmers could monitor their fields and farms from home; or manage their energy at home, or water their plants remotely. What if the benefits of broadband were articulated properly and were directly connected to their lives? This might win their interest.
I guess it’s more of a social issue, an issue of mentality if you like and the fact that no one has explained how broadband can relate to the rural jobs and rural daily life does not help the change. I think these are the questions to ask first before removing rural areas from any broadband deployment roadmap. Because if everyone deserves an opportunity to the new economy, then I suppose everyone needs to be given the chance to ask for it too.
