Anybody who lives in the back of beyond struggling to work from home in the UK on a slow DSL connection should stop reading now, as what I'm about to say won't make you feel any better.

In places like Singapore and Italy, home workers are enjoying the luxuries of high speed fibre optic connections, with available bandwidth for combined voice, video and data applications averaging 10Mbit/s and 100Mbit/s on the near horizon.

And this because they have a habit of living in blocks of flats or pensiones which are far more attractive commercial propositions to cable broadband companies than leafy villages and sparsely populated suburban streets that often accommodate more insects and garden gnomes than paying subscribers.

If you're lucky enough to live in an area served by NTL Telewest, the future looks bright. The forthcoming DOCSIS 3.0 specification could offer 100Mbit/s and even 1Gbit/s of bandwidth should the cable company find the motivation and the money to deploy compatible infrastructure nationwide, and not only in its trial area of Ashford in Kent (next time I speak to NTL Telewest I'll do my best to find out exactly what are its plans).

So should those on the wrong side of high speed cable divide give up our modest rural retreats and beat a march to the nearest urban high rise in the hope of getting super fast broadband, IP TV, low cost VoIP and other multimedia service goodies?

For myself, I think I'd rather prune the roses.

06 Jul 2006