Shropshire countryman Andrew Pinder warned last week that, without access to broadband communications, the countryside will die. "For the health of our rural communities, we need to have broadband there," he told the e-politix website. "If we don't, we're going to end up with an empty countryside and that's really bad for everybody."

Pinder has a weekday job, as Britain's e-envoy. For years, he has been proposing that government use its buying power to help deliver broadband to areas where market forces have failed. Next month, one of his ideas will become reality.

It's called aggregation. The scheme, announced by the e-commerce minister Stephen Timms last summer, is for public bodies, led by schools and the NHS, to buy shared broadband networks jointly. By acting together, they will get a better deal from telecom suppliers. And, because schools and GP surgeries are distributed throughout the population, their networks will require broadband exchanges to be installed in parts of the country that would not otherwise be commercially viable. Businesses and householders will then be able to piggy-back on the investment. "It's going to be a powerful mechanism for competitive interest," Timms says.

The new networks will be procured and managed by nine new "regional aggregation bodies" (RABs), one for each of England's regional development agencies. "We're currently drafting the terms and conditions for RABs and funding will be released at the end of October," Timms says. "In January, we expect the RABs to be procuring networks."

The scheme has two "anchor tenants". One is the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) which has a target to provide two megabits/s for primary schools and eight megabits/s for secondary schools by the end of 2006. The second is the NHS, which, for IT purposes, has reorganised its boundaries to match the English regions. It will need multi-megabit networks to carry the multimedia electronic records being created under the £2.3bn IT modernisation plan.

Timms is trying to persuade other public bodies to get on board. His first target is local authorities: "We're having quite an active discussion at the moment." However he has no powers to compel councils to join the schemes and some, especially county councils, are sceptical.

The Conservative-controlled Bedfordshire County Council, for example, is about to place a £400,000 order for its own broadband network (funded, ironically, by the Eastern Regional Development Agency). How does this fit with the regional aggregation programme? "It doesn't," says Richard Stay, executive member for information and systems. Stay says that counties, which have a strong local brand, will be better at promot ing broadband than a region no one has heard of. "Politically, I'm opposed to regions anyway, but I'm quite happy to take their money!"

Timms agrees that there is an argument for running networks at the county level, but that regions will have "significant efficiencies". These will be tested by a pathfinder aggregation region, East Midlands, which covers Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland. Alan Srbljanin, East Midlands broadband adviser, says he has developed a "compelling business case" for aggregating networks in the region. What remains to be proven is whether aggregation will result in broadband exchanges being built where they are needed. East Midlands is spending three months examining its assumptions before moving ahead. "The presumption is that we can resolve all the issues, then move to procurement in the spring," Srbljanin says.

Although aggregation will be driven by the state, Timms defends competition as the main mechanism for lifting Britain's level of broadband connections from its dismal international ranking. "We've overtaken France and are catching up on Germany, all because of very sharp competition."

And competition will continue to be a driver even when the new aggregated networks are in place: "We may end up with more than one service provider in each region."

Another broadband laggard, Ireland, will be watching with interest. Dermot Ahern, Ireland's minister of communications, marine and natural resources, is also offering an aggregation carrot, but with a stick, too. Ahern says that, unless telecom firms invest in rural broadband, he will force them by taking a levy from profits - especially those made on text messaging. "We'll take a little bit of the cream off the very high profits that are being made in Ireland as a result of high prices."

Timms dismisses a levy as unnecessary - the government already has the cash, in the form of £1bn for public sector broadband pledged by the prime minister last year.

But to meet these targets, the regions and their new aggregation bodies will have to get a move on. "We haven't got the leisure to spend six months watching how it works. I expect actual procurement to begin in January." If that happens, at least one Shropshire farmer will be cheering.