Bringing Flintshire’s broadband ‘notspots’ up to standard

Articles

BBC News – Plan to tackle Flintshire’s broadband ‘notspots’ (VIDEO)

BBC News – Action to eliminate Flintshire broadband ‘notspots’

My Comments

Another area of Wales is being tackled when it comes to providing broadband Internet of a real standard. This area encompasses Caerwys communities, Talacre, Deeside industrial estate and Ysceiflog; which are in the Flintshire county. Here, local government, in the form of the Flintshire County Council, is behind the effort

This issue has been made real because of the business necessity of a proper broadband Internet service. An example that was cited in the articles was the Northop Hall Country House Hotel losing a GBP£70,000 conference contract because the broadband Internet service wasn’t up to standard for overseas guests who were doing international business at a conference. Here, proper broadband Internet is becoming an expected service for hotels and similar venues, especially if the hotel wants to be valued as a place for business conferences.

I have always made readers aware of the common limitations that occur with ADSL broadband Internet deployments in regional and rural areas when I have commented on broadband in the country.

In these setups, the telephone exchange that services these areas is equipped with the DSLAM which is the necessary equipment for the broadband service, but the cabling infrastructure between the exchange and the customer’s premises is long and commonly operating below par. The ADSL broadband Internet service works at its best when the consumer’s ADSL modem receives a strong signal from the DSLAM installed in the exchange; and long or derelict telecommunications-wiring infrastructure between these devices works against this goal.

As well, in some cases, the telco has used pair-gain wiring – a cheap and lazy telecommunications wiring method –  to connect an increased number of telephone services in an area with fewer wires. Such services wouldn’t work well with machine-to-machine communications and are totally incompatible with ADSL.

These situations can work against the provisioning of real broadband Internet in rural areas and whenever Internet is provided to these areas, it isn’t just putting the appropriate modems in the equipment rack in the exchange that needs to be considered. These deployments may have to include reassessing the wiring in the neighbourhood and, in some cases, doing necessary work on the wiring to enable people to subscribe to broadband Internet at a real bandwidth.

I just hope that telecommunications companies always keep tabs on the condition of the telephone wiring infrastructure in the country and do better research on providing a proper standard of broadband Internet service in the country.

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