Fibre to the Home networks are being built all over the world (although not in the UK) as governments increasingly understand that in order to compete effectively they need to use the best in class technology. This humorous little ad from New Zealand makes the point about fibre very effectively:

The Colne Valley Fibre project is delivering a workshop/seminar event as a key element of the forthcoming annual conference of the Marsden & Slaithwaite Renaissance programme on November 21 in Marsden.

Participants will have the opportunity to get up to speed with the recent history of the development of next generation broadband in the UK and more widely, learn why this technology is so important to the future of the Colne Valley and other rural areas, and participate in the development of a strategy to create a community owned network for Marsden and Slaithwaite.

We are very pleased to announce that an application for support to the DTA'sCultivating Enterprise programme has been successful.

The support and funding that has been made available will enable us to greatly enhance the profile of the project and run a series of targeted events designed to inform local residents and businesses, and also to gain support from some of the key local public, private and third sector organisations.

As part of the development work being undertaken we will also be upgrading and enhancing the website.

The BBC has been up in Cumbria talking to the fibre activists. Here's the clip of Rory Cellan-Jones interviewing Daniel Heery, Alston's fibre champion.

Following the Digital Britain Summit - the high point of which from my reading was Peter Mandelson not ruling out public sector intervention (whoop di doo!) - the main fallout seems to be the increasing realisation that BT is simply not up to the job.

Lots of activity recently to update readers:

We have received some positive feedback about our Grassroots Grants funding application, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we will see a positive outcome on that in the next few weeks. If so that will really enable us to move forwards much more quickly.

I presented the project to the councillors and community representatives on our local area committee the other day, and the feedback was really positive. I now need to follow that up with some concrete proposals about how they can help us to deliver the project.

Our sister project in Calderdale - Calder Valley Our Net - has been successful in winning a bid for £5000 in grant funding from the Grassroots Grants scheme. As with our project here in the Colne Valley, the strategy of the Calderdale project is to first build awareness and support at a grassroots level while scoping the key issues and challenges of the locality in order to make a strong bid for second round funding to enable a full scale feasibility study to go ahead.

The Taylor Review of the Rural Economy and Affordable Housing, commissioned by the Prime Minister and published late July 2008, states that while "Growth in the proportion of knowledge intensive business services between 1998 and 2005 – largely reliant on ICT infrastructure – has increased by 46 per cent in rural areas compared to 21 per cent in urban areas" the performance of broadband in rural areas is markedly poorer than that in urban locations: "recent research also suggests connectio