The British Government has pledged to help out the development of Internet Technology in rural areas by implementing a recently conceived “Postal Internet” scheme.

With the likelihood of complete broadband coverage to all areas not likely to occur until 5 years at the earliest, the proposed Postal Internet service would provide a happy medium for those still struggling to obtain decent download times and use their telephone at the same time.

The scheme will also allow rural people without a PC to use the internet.

Priced at a moderately cheap £4.99 a month – significantly lower than any broadband or dialup accounts – users will simply write the address of the webpage they wish to visit and post it to a Government department in London. On receiving the address, a civil servant will download the requested page on a high speed fibre optic line, print it out and mail it to the person who requested to view the page.

The developers of the scheme say that most rural users should receive their web pages – virus free – in about 3-5 days. Although a direct comparison was unavailable the developers are certain this is far faster than their 56k modem used to be.

Online gamers from rural areas can celebrate too – the developers are working on a plug in that will enable the players of popular online games, such as Counter Strike and Unreal Tournament, to play their favourite game via postal internet.

“Once completed,” developer Keith Wilson explained to us in an exclusive interview, “All the gamer will need to do is to load up their desired game and map. Then they should explain in terms of paces forwards/backwards and degrees turned right/left the path they followed – much like using one of those old Logo tortoises. We will then feed all this information into our Postal games server and predict who would have won.

“It might not be as fast paced, But it would be far more skilful…. And fun!”

Whether the new scheme will prove successful or not is not yet clear. But with an ever increasing number of frustrated rural internet users, it is likely that many will feel they have no choice but to turn to [THIS ARTICLE IS STILL IN THE PROCESS OF BEING UPLOADED VIA POSTAL INTERNET’S ADVANCED POST BASED FTP SYSTEM]