The last five weeks has been something of a whirlwind as we prepare our bid to the Government’s Rural Connected Communities competition.
We are working hard to bring together a group of local, national and multi-national partners to show there are better and cheaper ways to offer the mobile connectivity that rural communities across the UK want and need.
With less than three weeks to go until the competition deadline, we hope to be able to reveal our partners and projects shortly. If we can pull this off it’s a truly exciting prospect for our area.
On Wednesday Dorset Council revealed how it plans to make the rural county a great place to live, work and visit. You can see and contribute to the draft here.
Improved digital connectivity is a key theme, including exploring how full fibre connections and 5G could help tackle our big social, environmental and economic challenges.
I’m not much of a numbers guy, but in researching our bid to government I have come across some pretty interesting statistics.
For example, the productivity gap in Dorset is put at £2.5bn per annum when compared with the UK average. It is estimated that inadequate digital connectivity contributes approximately £280m per annum to this productivity deficit.
Let’s hope this bid can play a small part in turning that around.
More information
5G: The potential in rural Dorset
Public Health Dorset statement on possible health concerns
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What is a productivity gap?
Thank you for the question. A productivity gap is the difference between one area’s productivity levels, as measured by output per workers or output per hour worked, in comparison with another area.