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Rural Broadband |
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Rural Broadband |
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Low Bandwidth in Rural Areas Many of us have now got Broadband. However, if you are much more than 2 miles from the exchange you will be lucky to get more than 2Mbps. This is most likely due to noise levels increasing as the cables get longer but can also be due to poor quality cables made of aluminium rather than copper or buried cables that are suffering from corrosion. Sometimes this bandwidth is reduced by Network Management. Occasionally pigeons may be faster! There are three solutions for us rural people on the end of long wires: One is to use glass fibre to connect to Primary Connection Points (PCP) which are the intermediate connection points between us and the exchange. They are also called cabinets and look like green metal cupboards by the side of the road - there is one on the Oakhill side of the cross roads at the Water Tower in Hollesley. This would effectively reduce the distance of all of us on the extremities to the exchange by half, but would cost a fortune. Estimates to fibre Britain are in the region of £30bn well beyond this Government's pocket. Brown's proposed £6 tax on telephone users to fund such an operation is futile in the face of the scale of the actual cost. "This unpopular tax will barely make a dent in the likely total cost," said Michael Phillips, product director for comparison site BroadbandChoices.co.uk. Cable & Wireless's Gavin Young says, " it will be challenging to reach the “final third” of homes in the UK. This is the dilemma that organisations like the Broadband Stakeholders Group, Ofcom and Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) have been struggling with." BT's suggested solution seems also to be far too expensive and has been rejected by most ISPs. This compares with Obama's injection of $2 into rural broadband and Finland's recognition of the legal right to have broadband. The second answer is 3G Mobile Broadband. Pay a monthly fee and get your bandwidth over the 3G network. However, already the network is becoming congested from iPhones and others running applications that are transferring more and more data. Furthermore the 3G coverage neglects rural areas and East Anglia is particularly badly served. The final solution is to switch to wireless and abandon 19th century wires for rural areas. There is currently a push to release spectrum that would solve the shortage of bandwidth in rural areas without installing costly infrastructure. Indeed wireless solutions are being installed all over the world especially in remote areas. There is much rural discontent in this country but a wireless answer seems to have solved the problem on Skye and for some Welsh monks and we look forward to this being deployed throughout the UK. It is encouraging that Kent County Council has awarded a grant to Vfast to improve speeds for people in the village of Womenswold in Kent using WiMax although the monthly costs are not publicised. Kent County Council have also provided funds to Iwade to provide fibre to the cabinet, and are also enabling fibre to the premises in the village of Selling with the assistance of ICS Ltd. EEDA is now offering funding of £0.5M for rural broadband projects in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Bedfordshire through the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE). More recently town councils are being encouraged to bid for some of the £830 million the govenment is making available from the BBC licence fee for proving better Broadband for rural businesses. Hooray! April 14th 2010 was the official opening day in Lyddington of the fastest fibre-optic broadband in the UK for a rural village. (Here the fibre is to the cabinet.) It needed local investment before Rutland Telecom installed the necessary equipment. Villages have to pay £30/month which includes line rental. Erbistock in Wales is the next village to benefit from Rutland Technology. However Rutland Telecom still has many battles to win. It is worth noting that small businesses (e.g. FramBroadband) are emerging that are supplying wireless Broadband locally to people who need it in rural areas and this is sure to expand. On a larger scale Swindon Borough Council has teamed up with Swindon Town FC chairman and the company aQovia to provide a wifi network covering the whole of Swindon. There will be free access for 2 hours a day, but this type of solution is hardly applicable to country folk. Organisations like Community Broadband Network help communities to set up their own fast connection but it costs. You can register not spots or slow spots at Broadband Notspot to alleviate your frustration. The company Avanti is providing a satellite (HylasOne) solution in 2010 for 320,000 broadband users across Europe. Whether this will satisfy the UK demand remains to be seen. Latency for applications like Voice Over IP (e.g. Skype) and gaming may be a problem. Another satellite system called TooWay is being offered by Tariam via the Eurobird 3 satellite. Broadband Wherever now provide satellite broadband internet to rural areas across the UK and Europe including a new Tooway 10mb service. The village of Wray in Cumbria seems to have hit on a good solution. With the help of Lancaster University they have installed very cheap hardware, and with some voluntary technical help and plenty of "DIY" have formed a non-profit making company (a Community Interest Company) to look after things. Problems can be dealt with on a personal basis rather than always a legal one (e.g. peer-to-peer users can be asked politely to do it not between 6pm and 11pm.). Using wireless mesh technology they have found a way to deliver Broadband to outlying communities. Watch a BBC film about the project. The system has been replicated in Wennington and a book has been published on the topic. Suffolk Coastal District Council has begun to collect information regarding the needs of rural areas in their patch. Go to the site to register and input your feelings. Sadly it now appears that BT is not planning to carry out any Broadband upgrades in Suffolk and the county is due to become a backwater in the Broadband stakes. BT has announced that 388 exchanges are now accepting orders for Super Fast Fibre Access in 388 exchanges, a further 216 will be ready by September 2011, and another 333 by 2012. BT has also promised on 13/9/2011 a further 114 exchanges by Autumn 2012. There are about 5600 exchanges in the UK, and needless to say none of our exchanges are in the roll out lists! In fact it looks like North Yorkshire alongside Cumbria, Herefordshire and the Scottish Highlands have chosen for government funding as rural testing grounds. How little these people know about the difficulties that the flat countryside of Suffolk and Norfolk present to Broadband distribution by wireless, or perhaps they do!. On a wider front click on map to see areas in England that cannot receive more than 2Mbps. A recent report states that the UK is 25th in the world in terms of the quality and reach of its Broadband networks so we do have a long way to go. Lucky Bury seems to have got the support of BT offering to provide fibre to the cabinet. If your house is near a cabinet the problem is solved; in most rural areas the cabinets are about half way between the exchange and the house. This will double the bandwidth down the copper wires but if it is low to start with, the only solution is wireless from the cabinet to the home. And who provides that? More recently BT has promised to upgrade the Kesgrave and Haverhill exchages in Suffolk to allow fibre to the cabinet. These are urban exchanges and will make little difference to rural areas. BT has also announced that it has obtained EU funding to assist in a public-private partnership to install Broadband infrastructure throughout Cornwall. Private money will be necessary to complete the project and one wonders where this will come from for the farmers on Bodmin Moor, for example. Again BT's "Race to Infinity" has met with criticism from rural communities. However, it was still a good idea to vote for a Broadband upgrade at your exchange if only to measure the demand in your area. The diocese of Hereford has pushed ahead by allowing church towers to house aerials that deiver Broadband to rural villages. A trial system was set up in the village of Kingstone with funds from the Government-backed BDUK pilot scheme. Now the telecom provider Allpay is endeavouring to connect more villages to the network. Allpay require a subscription of £15/month for 2Mbps and £29/month for 10Mbps. The diocese of Norwich has taken up a joint venture called Wispire with Freeclix to lauch a wireless network using church towers in Norfolk. Emphasis is not only on delivering broadband to rural communities but also to incorporate networked surveillance cameras to improve security. The main advantage of internet cameras is that the world can be watching for you! You can pan this internet camera, for example. Not for profit DIY Broadband seems to be the fastest way to get Broadband to rural areas. OK it's not superfast but it's better than a few 100Kbps. Martley in Worcestershire seem to have the right idea bonding ADSL lines together. Maybe fibre will come later when the network is big enough. The coalition government is diverting some of the BBC licence fee to support rural broadband infrastructure. £300M will come directly from the BBC licence fee, with the remaining £230m will be funded by underspend in the UK's digital TV switchover fund. More recently communications minister Ed Vaizey called on MPs to get county councillors to include community and parish voices in planning their broadband networks. Hear, Hear! He emphasised this point again at the Suffolk Broadband Conference. BT and other ISPs are facing extra scrutiny regarding bandwidth throttling in order to accommodate more customers. This is especially important now that Internet TV has gained approval and that BT will be delivering football over Broadband both of which seem likely to take priority for bandwidth. A survey of bandwidth speeds from the Shottisham exchange was completed with readings being mostly taken using the www.speedtester.bt.com tool during July and August 2009. Click on the Results button to see them. You can also record your speeds on a map by using broadbandspeedchecker. Or plot a graph using Mybroadbandspeed. Results show that bandwidth varies by as much as a factor of 50, so Why do we all have to pay the same for a service that varies so much in quality? We held a meeting on March 11th in Bawdsey Manor to voice our views. As a result a committee has been formed to take steps to improve the service in our part of the world. The Suffolk Broadband Partnership Conference took place on 12th May 2010. It was an opportunity to exchange information. Peter Aldous the MP for Waveney has held a Broadband in Suffolk Conference on Wednesday 6th April at the Waveney House Hotel in Beccles. A very popular conference that attracted a big audience. We learnt that Suffolk County Council is bidding for a £20M grant from BDUK to deliver Broadband in Suffolk. Great news! Our business case for funding to install Broadband infrastructure in the Wilford Peninsula has been promised a grant by the Rural Development Programme for England (see RDPE). So shortly we will be moving into action with true community spirit! Please register your interest on the www.wilfordbroadband.org.uk website so that we can plan ahead. There you can view a map showing those who have registered so far.
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| For email address go to Contact link on home page Page last updated Saturday 3rd December 2011 |
