smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Small firms in rural areas are at a disadvantage to their urban counterparts because they can’t access broadband technology, according to the Countryside Agency.

A survey from the Agency showed that 95% of households in urban areas have access to broadband services, compared to only 26% in market towns and a mere 7% in rural villages.

With the internet becoming increasingly important to business, rural small businesses could find themselves lagging behind the competition.

To address this problem the Government is creating the new post of Broadband Director, who will work with the e-commerce minister Stephen Timms, to speed up the nationwide introduction of the technology.

Part of this strategy will be to invest in the infrastructure through the public sector and rolling it out across rural areas of the country.

However, despite the benefits of broadband (see earlier story), the technology can have drawbacks. Research from internet solutions form Star Internet and market analyst the Yankee Group has shown that firms using broadband are 5 times more likely to be the victims of security breaches than those with dial-up access, due to broadband’s ‘always on’ nature. This is costing small businesses an estimated Ł2 billion a year.

Security breaches can “be just as devastating as a fire or a burglary, but many small businesses do not fully understand the risk they are running”, says Graham Finnie of the Yankee Group.

For information and advice on how to protect yourself from security breaches, visit www.ukonlineforbusiness.gov.uk and see our Broadband section.

(15/5/03)

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