RESIDENTS in one of London’s most deprived areas have been chosen to star in “E-Enders”, a £20 million scheme called Wired Network that aims to create the largest broadband community in Britain.

Online educational courses, video on demand and free local telephone calls are all part of a unique package that will be available to 20,000 people in Shoreditch, East London.

The project, which connects businesses and homeowners to an ultra high-speed broadband connection, is vital if Tony Blair is to meet a Labour conference pledge to ensure that every British home has broadband access by 2008.

IBM, the information technology company, will hand out 20,000 television set-top boxes to residents. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is providing funds for the scheme, which is being seen as a model for “wiring up” Britain. By this summer, 99.4 per cent of homes and businesses in Britain are expected to be able to access broadband technology — more than currently can access a clean analogue television signal.

However, Labour needs many more such partnerships if it is to narrow a digital divide that, critics have said, is becoming the new indicator of poverty in Britain.

Just 15 per cent of households in Britain have signed up to a broadband connection and charges of £20 a month are unrealistic for families struggling to meet their bills.

At the moment, broadband signals degrade over a distance of more than three miles from an exchange, but BT is developing technology to raise this to ten miles and next-generation wireless technology called WiMax can reach 30 miles from a single distribution point, which will help to bring broadband to remote rural areas.

Residents of Shoreditch, in the London Borough of Hackney, will be able to access a five megabit per second broadband service — ten times faster than most existing connections.

Services will include access to online CCTV cameras so that vulnerable people can see if it is safe to go out. There will be a community service for residents to exchange goods, choose plumbers or childcare from an approved list of suppliers and organise the collective purchase of utilities online.

It will be possible to make doctors’ appointments online and welfare-to-work participants will have access to online NVQ and English-language classes. The Wired Network also houses estate chatrooms and entertainment services, with computer games, a community music library and options for digital multichannel television. Residents will take part in online referendums on important local issues.

A Shoreditch New Deal Trust has been set up, mixing high-tech experts with local residents, to implement the scheme. Residents are asked to pay about £3.50 a week for the connection, including local phone calls, television and other entertainment costs.

Shoreditch expects to attract 1,000 small and medium-sized businesses to the area through the high-speed broadband link. The Shoreditch Trust believes that the package, which will be fully operational next year, should more than cover the monthly outlay, by providing returns in disposable income as well as quality of life.

The scheme is modelled on the example set by Milan, the world’s most densely fibre optic-cabled city. One Milan project connected 40,000 buildings through more than 200,000km (124,275 miles) of fibre optic cable.

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, is backing the scheme, which will be rolled out to Islington, Camden and then across London.

Michael Pyner, the Shoreditch New Deal Trust chief executive, said: “It shows that IT projects are not just the preserve of a rich elite; they can make a major contribution to traditional working-class communities who would otherwise find the internet revolution passing them by.”

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