ANY aspiring high-tech community needs to be well connected.

Nowadays this is every bit as important for digital communication provision as for roads, railways and air links.

It hardly seems any time since York was contemplating the roll-out of ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), which uses the standard copper cable telephone network.

Five years ago, Science City York lobbied hard to ensure York was an early adopter, but initial business uptake was poor. Once BT realised it not only needed to produce world-beating technology, but also had to take an interest in marketing it, York became one of the UK's fastest locations in signing up to ADSL.

Now Yorkshire will soon be one of the few regions in the UK to have broadband services available to all its communities. How times change!

As connections are getting faster and cheaper, broadband is starting to deliver on its early promises.

Whether for pleasure or business, it is now becoming essential to get on line and not be left behind.

It is worth pointing out ADSL is not the answer to all business needs.

As download speeds get faster there is a limit of 256k upload speed and bandwidth speeds can fluctuate due to sharing a line with up to 50 other users.

Broadband accessibility is crucially important to us and our businesses, and there will soon be further developments, including provision of SDSL (Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line), so that upload speeds compare better with download speeds - something very important to many members of York's IT and digital cluster.

Although this is great news for those wanting to browse the internet or receive large emails, you cannot host web servers, video-conference or send large files quickly. For these types of business a leased line giving the same speed both ways and dedicated (not shared) is required.

That is why it is so important that our young, dynamic digital and IT businesses have access to the broadband facilities that are fundamental to their progress. The 100Mb link in the IT Centre on York Science Park is a good example of such provision.

This can be opened for tenants to use on a day-to-day basis so that, for example, a firm might want 2Mb as standard, but 10Mb when the work requires it.

Mark Fordyce, chairman of York Data Services, the company providing internet connectivity in the IT Centre, told me: "I get most excited about broadband when it's mixed with wireless access points, which are popping up everywhere, catering for a whole new breed of nomadic entrepreneur.

"Armed with just a mobile and laptop your office is wherever you can hop onto a connection, and with the rise in quality of VOIP (voice over IP) you will soon be able to ditch the mobile phone too.

"So whether it's your high street coffee shop or, my personal favourite, the Apple store in Regents Street (where access is free) you can cut business deals on the move and remove yourself from the shackles/burden of the office."

I agree with him. The company Square Mile International, recently featured on the BBC TV programme Dragons' Den, is installing wireless hotspots in most of the UK's boating marinas.

It will be just as easy to sit on my boat working and accessing the web as it is to be in the confines of a conventional office.

Broadband is changing both the way that we work and where we work.

The good news for York is that we are right up with the vanguard and will need to make sure that we stay there.

Updated: 10:46 Wednesday, December 07, 2005