Members of the Cybermoor board have recently returned from a fact finding visit to Sweden, funded by the North Pennines LEADER+ programme and DEFRA.

Richard Turner, Daniel Heery and Brian Marshall of Cybermoor pictured with Victoria, Community Interpretation & Education Officer at Glashus Ett, Stockholm.

The objective of the visit was to identify new technologies and applications and assess whether they are transferable to the communities of the North Pennines.

Sweden is twice the size of the U.K., has a population of about 7.5 million and distances between communities can be vast by our standards.

In an international perspective many consider Sweden to be a forerunner in the broadband field. Today others may have caught up, but it holds a lot of competence with a wealth of usually small companies offering products and services related to broadband.

The delegation attended 17 presentations in 4 days, which included a 300 miles flight to Lulea, in the far north, 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle. On the flight up it was discovered that a bear had just killed a hunter near Lulea. Thermals appeared to be fairly useless in such a situation. It was later discovered the accident had happened some 50 miles further north and was the first in over 100 years. Thermals were still useless as the air temperature was plus 2 C.

At Lulea University a number of interesting projects were looked at, some of which may be applicable to Cybermoor and it was then back to Stockholm arriving at 11pm, followed the next morning at 9am by the first of many presentations throughout the day. It takes stamina to do it, however, everyone speaks English, which does help. It's 900 years since the Vikings left these parts, but the odd dialect word in Geordie or Cumbrian can still be heard.

Both the U.K. and the Swedish governments have invested in broadband transmission, with the Swedes electing to use fibre optic cable at about £12 per meter as the backbone, much more efficient, but vastly more costly. The smaller operators such as Cybermoor, do manage to compete in what is a very competitive market.

Regarding future developments - that was summed up by one M.D of an I.T. company when he said "Only imagination can hold you back as to how far I.T. will go, everything is possible, but at a price".

The visit was useful to gain an insight to one of the ways forward for Cybermoor in the future and some of the ideas may result in future income and greater services to Cybermoor. That profit would then go to Cybermoor and help towards its self sustainability, watch this space.

Our concept of Cybermoor as a Broadband Cooperative with a social impact upon the community impressed a number of the movers and shakers we met.

Imagine a City where the air is so fresh it felt like the Moor... being able to walk up to the doors of a Royal Palace and speak to the guards.... a Parliament building without a single armed police in sight and in it's place anglers catching 12 lbs sea trout.... that was Stockholm. At least the weather was the same as on the Moor, wet.

Report and photograph by Brian Marshall