Last Updated: 12-04-2012

Within the superfast Northamptonshire project we are looking to help engage those proactive communities across the county that want to increase their broadband connection. Below are some examples of these types of communities who have got together to create their own community project.

Northamptonshire

Welford and South Kilworth

Welford approached the County Council to discuss how they could ensure demand for superfast broadband could be stimulated within their locality. Demand stimulation and registration is seen as a key driver for teleco’s to consider an investment to upgrade an exchange. Subsequently a broadband survey was designed (in partnership with South Kilworth) to capture information such as current broadband speeds, broadband usage and the consideration for additional payment towards receiving superfast speeds (24mbps or above).

To this end, the Welford scouts were enlisted to deliver, and subsequently collect, survey forms from the villagers. A big thank you to the village youngsters in helping towards the future of communications in general via fibre optics.

Welford received a fantastic reply, receiving 183 completed surveys. This information is to be analysed and will be put forward as part of the superfast Northamptonshire proposal to highlight the demand within Welford to receive superfast broadband speeds.

Spratton

The village has about 1300 residents, some 480 homes but no substantial commercial premises. There are an average rural cross section of broadband subscribers whose requirements range from owner/manager small businesses, home workers, academics and educational needs as well as private domestic users. Spratton Village Stores serves the community, but there is no Post Office, bank, library, medical centre or supermarket.

A technical survey in May last year indicated that the average download speed receivable in the village was 0.8 Mbps

For the last 18 months the Parish Council have been attempting to ascertain, primarily with BT, how and when FTTC (fibre), which seems by far the optimum solution, can be installed from the exchange to the 2 BT cabinets in the village. The possibilities of a commercial scheme as well as links via the two schools have been explored but all have proved impractical, mainly on cost grounds.

Many Spratton residents participated in BT’s “Race to Infinity”.  Under the circumstances with the large number of less affected suburban subscribers in the exchange, on a purely percentage basis we hardly did well statistically, nor could be expected to do so given the subscriber base of the Chapel Brampton exchange.

Warmington and Lutton

There is strong support for better broadband from rural communities.  Many parish councils have already been active in developing their own surveys to register demand and help make the case for improved broadband access. 

As an example, a broadband survey was sent to 467 domestic properties and 19 businesses in the villages of Warmington and Lutton in the north of the county.   The survey received a 100% response rate from businesses and a 28% response rate from domestic properties.   Some key findings were:

• 50% of households said if high speed broadband was made available, members of their household would use it more related to work, reducing the need to travel for work.
• 28.2% of respondent households said that high speed broadband would encourage the setting up of a new business from home, thus enabling both environmental benefits and economic benefits.
• 10.5% of businesses said high speed broadband would enable their employees to work from home, which means savings in office space, electricity usage for computers, lighting, heating etc.

Warmington and Lutton has successfully reached the full application stage of the Rural Community Broadband fund

Helmdon

A project to bring fibre broadband to residents in Helmdon in South Northamptonshire is underway.  The FiSH project (Fast Internet Service for Helmdon) is in its infancy but already the ingredients are coming together.  Faster broadband was a need identified by the recently refreshed Parish Plan and Helmdon Parish Council is fully behind it.  Councillor Danny Moody says “Our closest exchange is 4km away in Sulgrave so current speeds are very low, sometimes struggling to hit 1Mbps”, “the frustrating thing though is that there is a fibre pipe into the village for the primary school, so the capacity is there and it’s just a case of working out how it might be delivered.”  Helmdon residents have had a number of meetings with EMBC, who manage the fibre infrastructure as well as “last third” companies such as Gigaclear who could take the fibre from the school to individual homes.  Councillor Moody added “The technology is the easy bit.  At the end of the day it will come down to simple economics… are there enough residents prepared to sign up to a contract with a service provider such that it makes financial sense for the provider to invest in the infrastructure”.  Although with speeds of ten times, even 100 times what is available now the FiSH project looks certain to make progress.

Helmdon has also recently completed their Parish Plan survey and included questions on Broadband.  They gained 189 respondents out of 350 premises in the village.  50% of the respondents suggested they would be willing to contribute to one off costs of introducing upgraded broadband to the village.

Elsewhere

Cornwall (including plans for their roll out phase)

http://www.superfastcornwall.org/
http://www.superfastcornwall.org/success-stories.html
http://www.superfastcornwall.org/see-how-its-built.html
http://www.youtube.com/superfastcornwallgl=GB&user=superfastcornwall#p/u/1/R8G8pHaLQes

Hambleton

Gigaclear have started their work on delivering fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) to the Rutland village of Hambleton after Rutland Telecom announced their Hambleton deployment plans back in December 2010. The project is financed through investors from Hambleton Village, with a long-term loan secured against the network

Customers receive a Gigabit-ready router which has a fibre Gigabit network interface, 4-Gigabit Ethernet ports and wireless support up-to 300Mbps, whilst supporting both IPv4 and IPv6. The initial product offerings will see only speeds of up to 50Mbps.

Over 60% of the village have registered for the service where current broadband speeds average 0.7 Mbps and they will see speeds increase to 50meg. The infrastructure being used by Rutland Telecom will see a full point-to-point fibre link deployed between premisses and the fibre cabinet deployed in the village. FTTH deployments by BT currently use GPON which passively joins multiple fibres on to a single fibre which reduces the amount of fibre needed for backhaul, but can limit future services that are available. With the solution being installed in Hambleton, faster services can easily be deployed through the use of different wavelengths on the fibre for sending data. Rutland Telecom are using GEO for their fibre build.

Two packages are available for customers in the area. A residential product offers 50meg broadband with a 5meg upload speed and 25GB usage allowance for £50 per month on a 12 month contract. A business package of symmetrical 50meg (that’s 50meg upload and download) with a 250GB usage allowance and lower contention will cost £100 per month on a 12 month contract. No setup fee is chargeable for those who signed up before the 1st of December although a minimum connection fee will apply of £1000+VAT subject to survey (costing a further £150) for any new orders. These will also be restricted by civil works and will likely only go forward once at least 3 or 4 premises want to be connected.

Whilst the costs are not cheap, they are not dissimilar to the costs that Virgin initially charged for their 50meg broadband when this was first launched (£51 per month), although Rutland Telecom do have a usage limit on the product. Of course, living in a rural area increases the costs of receiving services, and the high costs have obviously not dissuaded too many from signing up. Many I’m sure will be thankful to finally receive a fast Internet service

Newton-on-Rawcliffe and Stape

This area is part of the first scheme of its kind in England, launched by NYnet and Yorkshire-based company NextGenUs UK CIC.  NYnet, which was formed by Yorkshire Forward and North Yorkshire County Council with funding from the European Union, NextGenUs UK CIC and Beeline Broadband, have collaborated to give residents access to a broadband connection with up to 10Mbps upload and download speeds.  And the connection has already made a huge difference to the residents that have signed up to the scheme.

Barnard Castle

The Digital Dale project was launched to make broadband internet connections available across the dale.  The Barnard Castle Vision-led scheme offers a guaranteed minimum speed of 2 megabytes per second (Mbps) for all homes and businesses and the wireless Wimax service is currently being rolled out through the dale.

Lyddington http://www.rutlandtelecom.co.uk/lyddington/

Northern Ireland http://nibroadband.com/testimonials

There are also a number of case studies available on the BT NGA website: http://www.btplc.com/ngb/Casestudies/index.htm