The Big Question: Is broadband narrowing the gap between town and country?

Why are we asking this now?

If Laurie Lee were alive today and writing about life in rural Gloucestershire, he might want to call his novel Cyber with Rosie, to judge from the Communications Market Report of the media regulator Ofcom. Ofcom has discovered that 59 per cent of rural households are now using broadband, compared with 57 per cent of households in the city.

From being a leisure toy for city-dwellers, broadband has become a convenience for people who live down country lanes, away from the shops. It seems that having broadband in the home is a bit like having a black-and-white television half a century ago. Recently, it marked you out as someone unusual; very soon, there will hardly be a home on your street without it.

What are people using broadband for?

Until recently, broadband was used for research or recreation – mugging up for an essay, or downloading videos or music, or taking part in chatroom conversations. But the rise in rural use is more practical, driven by the convenience of online shopping and banking. Three-quarters of the rural internet users surveyed by Ofcom said that they used it for commercial transactions, not just to gather information.

In cities, that proportion is somewhat lower, at about 69 per cent, for the obvious reason that well stocked supermarkets are closer at hand for city dwellers. Similarly, rural users are more likely to watch films online, because they live a long way from the nearest cinema or theatre.

Have they stopped watching television?

There was a time when a popular television programme could have the nation's adult population watching it simultaneously. That time is gone for ever. About 30 per cent of the population now takes audio-visual content from the internet, a proportion that is likely to go up and up.

Even so, those televisions in the corners of sitting rooms are not fit for scrap just yet, because Ofcom's surveys shows that the nation still watches television for an average of 3.4 hours a day – four hours in Scotland and the north-east of England. In most cases, that now means digital television, which has now reached 85 per cent of all households.

Sounds like good news for the engineers who make a living laying telephone lines?

Actually, despite the spread of broadband, telephones with land lines are on the way out. In 2006, 86 per cent of UK households had land lines. That proportion has fallen to 83 per cent, as people divest themselves of old-fashioned telephones and use mobiles instead. This is particularly true in Belfast, where 23 per cent of households use only mobile phones, and in some northern cities, including Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. It is not so in rural areas, or in London, where 93 per cent still have a land line.

Overall, 12 per cent of households use mobile phones only. The cities with high mobile phone only use also tend to be those where access to broadband is lowest, but that could change. One adult in five has already used a mobile phone to access the internet, 17 per cent have used it to listen to the radio or other audio content, and 4 per cent have downloaded video content by mobile phone.

Is there a digital divide between rich and poor?

Ofcom's report came with a triumphal press release which implied that the "digital divide" which plagued internet use as recently as two or three years ago has disappeared. In previous reports, Ofcom had noted that take-up of the internet was "strikingly lower" in the countryside than in the towns, sometimes for purely technical reasons. Not any more.

Looking at the statistics overall, Ofcom triumphantly announced: "When broadband was first introduced in the UK in 2000, households in urban areas were the first to take the service, leading to concerns that a digital divide was emerging between country and built-up areas – but the rapid rollout of broadband services across the country has meant that most parts of the UK now have access to this service and today's report marks the end of the so-called divide."

The idea that the internet is now everywhere was supported by the rather surprising finding that the digital capital of the UK is not some prosperous place in the South-east, but Sunderland, in the North-east, which has been grappling for years with high unemployment and the loss of traditional industries.

The urgent need there to diversify out of shipbuilding and coal mining has spurred Sunderland council to invest heavily in digital technology, so that 96 per cent of households in the city now have digital television and 66 per cent have broadband. Both figures are higher than anywhere else in the country. In London and Edinburgh, in comparison, 62 per of homes have broadband.

But is Ofcom right to say the digital divide is over?

It is, of course, a fallacy to suggest that rich people live in cities and that everyone living in a village is poor. The rural poor exist, but alongside them are a lot of wealthy people who have moved to the countryside for a better quality of life. It should not surprise anyone that they own computers and have invested in broadband where it is available. It may be a welcome development for all sorts of reasons that they are able to use the internet to work from home, but it is not in itself a step towards a more equal society.

The breakdown of Ofcom's figures by region show that broadband use is more extensive in England than in any other part of the United Kingdom, and in London and east England more than in any other English regions. Northern Ireland and the north-west of England are where broadband has the lowest level of penetration.

Ofcom's survey also shows up a class divide. Working-class families are less likely to be online than those in the social group designated ABC1. In London, for example, broadband is found in 85 per cent of ABC1 households, but only 55 per cent of C2DE homes.

Although Sunderland may have embraced the digital age, the same is not true of every city with similar problems.

In Liverpool, just 40 per cent of homes are online, and in Glasgow, only 32 per cent. Generally, region by region, where there is money, there is broadband. Despite Ofcom's triumphant claims, the digital divide is with us still.

Is broadband the path to a more equal society?

Yes...

* Any new technology is necessarily available only to an elite at first – but broadband has passed that point

* Broadband has brought online shopping, banking and other facilities to rural areas where they used to be a long car journey away

* Sunderland's example shows how digital technology can reach into places blighted by the decline of old industries

No...

* So the rural stockbroker belt is online, but Ofcom does not even know how much of Scotland is beyond the reach of broadband

* Internet access is more likely to be found in affluent homes – one more advantage for those higher up the social scale

* The social divide is even greater for broadband access, with the poorest likely to be in the slow lane

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