2015年经济学人 乡村宽带 埋入地下（在线收听）

Rural broadband

Going underground

Frustrated country-dwellers build their own internet connections

FUSION splicing is a technique network engineers use to string together optical fibres.

It is not a skill that Christine Conder, a 60-year-old farmer's wife, ever expected to learn.

But with borrowed tools and a little training most people can pick up the basics. “It's only like knitting,” she says.

For years Mrs Conder and her neighbours in the Lune Valley, in rural Lancashire,

waited for telecoms firms to upgrade their sluggish internet connections.

In 2011 they decided to do it for themselves.

Their organisation, called Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN),

has sold shares worth more than ￡1m ($1.7m) to buy ducts and cables for volunteers to install.

Because younger residents are commonly busy with jobs and families, local pensioners have done much of the digging, says Mrs Conder:

“Some are getting sixpacks for the first time in years.”

Enthusiasts say that locally owned networks such as B4RN—also known as “altnets”—

could eventually connect many thousands of rural communities.

Going it alone looks particularly tempting to the unlucky 5-10% of Britons who are probably too far-flung to benefit from the more than ￡1 billion in subsidies that the government is giving BT,

the former state telecoms monopoly, to extend its high-speed network outside Britain's towns.

And whereas BT has focused on cranking up the speeds it delivers through existing copper telephone wires,

most altnets are plugging houses directly into optical cables that can provide some of the fastest connections in the world.

To grow beyond a mere curiosity, though, Britain's altnets need more help.

B4RN is a case in point. In two years its volunteers have laid 200km of cable, and wired up around 400 homes, without any taxpayer money.

But to shore up the network they must now dig their cable under the River Lune.

Until they raise more cash to dig a tunnel—perhaps as much as ￡50,000—that project is stalled.

Politicians are supportive, in principle. Last year the coalition government found ￡20m to help local initiatives solve just such problems.

A lot of it went unspent. That is because many of the local authorities responsible for overseeing the rural roll-out have yet to confirm for certain which farms and villages will be left out of BT's state-subsidised work.

Until they do, even miserly grants are suspended, for fear that some spots will end up with a double dose of public funds.

MPs are livid. In early April politicians on the public accounts committee urged the government to make sure coverage plans are available for every postcode.

BT has argued that it is still surveying some areas, and that publishing the most comprehensive forecasts would reveal its methods to rivals.

Critics say its vagueness is designed to frustrate initiatives that threaten its incumbency.

Lately it has grown more forthcoming. But local authorities are also hesitant to let on who will and who will not be included in the roll-out, at least while the details may change.

Mrs Conder says that B4RN will cross the river “no matter what it takes”.

But thieves who made off with ￡14,000 of kit in December pinched a little of its confidence.

Local bigwigs have not always helped—rail bosses have refused B4RN permission to lay fibre over a bridge they own.

Her own connection, at least, will soon be up and running.

Broadband firms would charge many thousands of pounds to bring ultra-fast internet to the farm; B4RN customers pay ￡150 to plug in.

It has cost her much more in time and energy.