Stuart Watts, of Duke’s Mill, Bigbury, writes:

As a fellow resident of the parish of Bigbury, I share the frustration expressed by your correspondent from Bigbury-on-Sea about slow and ­unreliable internet connectivity in his letter ‘Turning a blind eye to problem’, Gazette, October 7.

Despite the recent introduction of local ‘fibre-to-cabinet’ optical cabling, my household’s access to the internet during the summer months was often impossibly slow and subject to long, unpredictable periods of total unavailability.

Poor broadband service may be due to a host of factors, both inside and outside the home, but the well-documented ­population explosion in the summer months in this prime holiday area surely must rank among the most important.

Even a superficial examination of the numbers makes the point very well: Devon County Council’s population projection for the South Hams in 2018 is 86,200, but according to Visit South Devon’s marketing ­figures, there were 3,781,000 ‘tourism day visits’ to the South Hams in 2011.

These days, many of our ­visiting families will be using one or more internet-dependent mobile devices,

and just like our rural roads, the limited capacity of the ­broadband traffic management systems cannot cope effectively with the vastly increased ­summer demand – so this is one reason for poor broadband connectivity.