/spandiv class="correspondent-byline" div class="correspondent-byline-inner" a href="/news/correspondents/richardmoss" span class="correspondent-portrait"img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/52298000/jpg/_52298429_moss-144x104-grey.jpg" alt="Richard Moss" width="144" height="104"/span span class="byline-lead-in"Article written by/span span class="name"Richard Moss/span /a span class="bbc-role"Political editor, North Eastnbsp;amp; Cumbria/spana rel="me" href="/news/correspondents/richardmoss"More from Richard/a/div /divdiv class="has-icon-comment dna-comment-count-simple"nbsp;/divdiv style="float:right;width:305px;display:inline;font-size:13px;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;line-height:16px;" div id="emp-13806706-86125" class="emp"div class="warning" img width="326" title="BBC iPlayer holding image, view original article for media" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/53466000/jpg/_53466236_mary_no_bb.jpg" alt="Mary Collard lives near Hutton Magna in Teesdale " /div/divp class="caption"Mary Collard: "It is a basic human right to be connected to the internet"/p/divdiv class="story-feature related narrow" Related Stories/div p class="introduction"We've all been there. You click on a web address, and the dreaded egg timer becomes stuck on the screen./p pBut Mary Collard would give anything just to have that dubious pleasure./p pThat's because the internet connection in her County Durham home is not just slow, it's non-existent./p pFor a few years she did have an unstable dial-up connection through the telephone./p pThat's now failed, and her attempts to get broadband have repeatedly foundered./p div style="float:right;width:305px;display:inline;font-size:13px;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;line-height:16px;" img src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/53481000/jpg/_53481631_007678912-1.jpg" width="304" height="171" alt="Laptop computer"span style="width:304px;"Broadband can be a lifeline for rural communities but many living there have a slow connection/span /div pMore than a dozen BT engineers have come and gone, and none has managed to get her connected./p pMary does live in rural Teesdale, but not in the wilds. She's only seven miles from her nearest town./ppShe finds it incredibly frustrating. The lack of an internet connection forced her to give up her role with the parish council, and makes many everyday tasks impossible./p div style="width:280px;float:right;clear:right;font-size:13px;text-align:right;margin-right:20px;"blockquote style="font-weight:bold;font-size:16px;"p class="first-child"ldquo;Everyone increasingly expects you to do things online these days, and just can't understand it when you can'trdquo;/p/blockquotespan class="quote-credit"Mary Collard/span span class="quote-credit-title"Teesdale villager/span /div pShe said: "You can't do internet shopping, pay bills, buy tickets, or file your tax returns. Everyone increasingly expects you to do things online these days, and just can't understand it when you can't. I think it's a basic human right to be able to access the internet."/p pThis is a problem which affects more people than you might think./p pMore than 87,000 people in County Durham can't get a decent broadband connection./p pAnd the problems don't stop there./p pCarlisle has the worst connection problems in the country, with almost two thirds of people not having a decent service. /p pIt is mostly rural areas that are struggling as you can see from the table below./p div class="data-table-outer"/div pa href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/local/pdf/broadband_distribution.pdf"span class="pdf-icon"PDF download/span Full list of constituencies[4KB]/a/p pIt's not just individuals who suffer, of course. Broadband is vital for attracting and retaining businesses and jobs in the countryside./p pThe government says it is doing something about it though./p pIt's set aside pound;530m to improve connections in the countryside. /p pThat has helped people like Carol Bowe./p div style="width:280px;float:right;clear:right;font-size:13px;text-align:right;margin-right:20px;"blockquote style="font-weight:bold;font-size:16px;"p class="first-child"ldquo;The Tory-led government's proposals will do nothing to halt the broadband divide across the UKrdquo;/p/blockquotespan class="quote-credit"Ian Lucas MP/span span class="quote-credit-title"Shadow Business Minister/span /div pShe runs a caravan park near Northallerton in North Yorkshire./p pA year ago, she was spending hours struggling to send e-mails on a painfully slow connection./ppShe decided to do something about it, and after getting the local community together, she's succeeded./p pThe caravan park and surrounding villages now have superfast 20Mbps broadband. Some of her guests now use it to video call friends across the world./p pBut as well as her own campaigning, it did also require some government funding to make it happen./p pAnd while North Yorkshire and Cumbria have benefited from the pound;530m, County Durham has failed on two occasions to get anything out of the fund. /p pNow it's emerged the pound;530m will not be enough to achieve the government's broadband targets./p pThe Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt says a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/8579105/Government-admits-it-only-has-half-the-money-for-superfast-broadband.html" title="Daily Telegraph: Government admits it only has half the money for superfast broadband"another pound;530m will be needed/a from councils, the private sector and Europe to achieve its targets. It hopes then to provide superfast broadband to 90% of people by 2015./pdiv style="float:right;width:305px;display:inline;font-size:13px;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;line-height:16px;" img src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/53481000/jpg/_53481635_marycollard.jpg" width="304" height="171" alt="Mary Collard"span style="width:304px;"Mary Collard is sceptical about promises of improved broadband provision in her area/span /div pLabour says a href="http://top10.com/broadband/news/2011/05/labour_urges_coalition_to_speed_up_broadband_rollout/" title="Top10.com Broadband News: Labour urges coalition to speed up broadband rollout"that's not good enough/a./p pIt says the government has already let down communities by pushing back plans to provide a basic universal 2Mbps service from 2012 to 2015./p pNow it believes the Culture Secretary should be finding more money to ensure that everyone gets superfast broadband rather than a minimum service./p pShadow Business Minister Ian Lucas said: "The Tory-led government's proposals will do nothing to halt the broadband divide across the UK and will act as a brake on business growth across the country just when it is needed most." /p pAnd Hilary Talbot, from the a href="http://www.ncl.ac.uk/cre/"Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University/a, agrees 2Mbps won't be enough./p pShe said: "It's better than nothing of course, but for the vast majority of businesses, individuals and students in rural areas, it won't be enough to allow them to do what they will want and need to do."/p pOf course, the government says it has to be careful with public money, and it believes it's achieving more than Labour did on broadband by involving communities./p pBut Mary Collard is sceptical about promises from anyone./p pShe said: "I hope I'm still alive by 2015 to see it, but I won't hold my breath. I may have moved by then, because who wants to live in an area where you can't communicate properly with people?"/p pAnd that's the key. For many rural communities, their survival may depend on whether the government, councils and companies can get them connected. /ppThis article is from the a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk" title="Link to BBC News"BBC News website/a. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites./p pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6E4FGVjppmryv0NSNXvtiOcosJg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6E4FGVjppmryv0NSNXvtiOcosJg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6E4FGVjppmryv0NSNXvtiOcosJg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/6E4FGVjppmryv0NSNXvtiOcosJg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BbcNewsTechnologyFullFeed/~4/8_5Va0dFeZQ" height="1" width="1"/