Up to 3m (predominantly rural) homes in the UK are unable to receive an ADSL or cable broadband service at present. Instead they have to rely on a clunky, super-slow dial-up service.

These so-called broadband "notspots" are a major irritation for the homes in question and a big policy challenge for the government, that is committed to providing up to 2 Mbps broadband access for all by 2012.

Notspots exist as the great majority of broadband customers access broadband via the DSL (copper wire) broadband network. And with the DSL broadband technology, customers need to be within 4 km of their local telephone exchange in order to get a broadband service with speeds of 2Mbps or more.

So what should you do if you are in a notspot and are currently not able to receive a broadband service at your address.

Realistically you have three options:

- Settle for a slow and clunky dial-up connection which will remain a very frustrating  experience;

- Consider a mobile broadband service, though this needs a 3G mobile signal to work well and so may also not be available in your area. Mobile broadband does not require a home phone line as it uses the mobile phone network accessed via a special "dongle";

- Consider satellite broadband from a company like Tooway - though the set up cost is high.

In the medium term, notspots may become a thing of the past as there are other broadband technologies in development which could overcome the propblem.  For example is developing a technology called BET (Broadband Enabling Technology) which it hopes will solve the problem by extending the broadband "range" from 5 km to 12 km.

BET can provide broadband speeds between 1 and 2Mbps for notspot homes currently saddled with dial-up and BT stated that with financial support from the government it could roll out the technology to bring broadband to every home in the UK by 2012.

Incidentally the situation is rather different in economies that have invested in fibre-optic broadband networks as the backbone of their national broadband infrastructure.  Japan for example, which has widespread FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) broadband - has average broadband speeds of roughly 90Mbps - a far cry from the UK objective of 2Mbps

And the Australian government has recently committed  A$43bn to bring fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) ultra-fast broadband to 90 per cent of homes. The remaining 10 per cent will be catered for by wireless mobile broadband and satellite broadband.