This year marks our tenth anniversary of moving from the City back to the countryside.

When we took the decision to move, we wrote a list, Pros and Cons of living in both the city and the countryside. Lifestyle, freedom, entertainment, employment etc.

One of the things we absolutely did not think about was how to stay in touch. In the city we had a choice of mobile networks that all worked, we could choice cable, satellite or broadband, find the best deal and not really consider the quality of the service (to a point!)

I remember first arriving at Garden Cottage, grabbing my phone to call Vicky to let her know I was here safe, NO SIGNAL. Walking around the garden, phone in hand, waving it about in the vain hope of seeing a bar appear on the signal strength.

As it turns out, rural broadband, rural mobile coverage has become a hot topic. I’ve been involved in consulting with business’s, local councils and government members of parliament about the roll out of rural connectivity for most of my career since returning to the countryside.

From satellite broadband to bouncing wireless signals from church spires around the countryside, the problem of how to connect rural homes and businesses was significant. From our own point of view, we have a growing family, a successful blog and work access, broadband was a very important utility to us.

The change in ten years has been incredible. Thanks to massive investment from network providers and government I no longer have to prance around the garden looking for a signal and we can subscribe to streaming services or have video conversations with friends thanks to improved fibre broadband connectivity.

We’ve used EE broadband for a while, the service is reliable, it’s always easy to speak to their customer service and the price has always been very competitive.

Now with download speeds of up to 30 Mb, we are able to take advantage of online tutoring services,get our shopping delivered, chat to friends, boost that pesky mobile signal by using WiFi calling, enjoy streaming services, work via cloud computing and bring you this informative and entertaining blog!

Living in the countryside has changed our lives. That list of pros and cons I mentioned at the start of this piece, is considerably shorter. Reliable decent broadband has bought most of the pros of the city directly to our home. We really have the best of both worlds!