AN AREA of 50 square miles around the Yorkshire Dales village of Austwick switched onto broadband web services today at a press conference organised by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Austwick and surrounding hamlets in the shadow of the famous Three Peaks hills had been considered too small to justify a broadband service by British Telecom, which fought a two-year-battle to avoid providing the service to rural communities it considered unprofitable.

So Defra stepped in with a £32,000 rural enterprise grant and local residents raised the remaining £14,000 needed to get connected. The news service covers not just Austwick but other tiny hamlets and outlying farms in Wharfe, Feizor, Lawkland, Eldroth and Keasden.