Tag: B4RN

The B4RN community broadband effort extends to East Anglia

Articles

Tree in Butley Suffolk - pictuer by Eebahgum (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Suffolk to benefit from the B4RN rollout

B4RN EA starts the dig that will bring Gigabit full fibre to villages in Norfolk | ThinkBroadband

UPDATE B4RN Expand 1Gbps FTTH Broadband to Rural Suffolk and Norfolk | ISPReview.co.uk

From the horse’s mouth

B4RN East Anglia

Home Page

Press Release

My Comments

The B4RN effort is a successful rural broadband effort that relies on community effort to bring FTTP all-fibre broadband to villages within the UK countryside. This has initially taken off within the North of England but is also taking off in Lancashire and a few other rural communities there.

What has been happening in some of the B4RN areas is that the UK’s “broadband establishment” namely Openreach have been building out infrastructure in to those areas to compete with these efforts. This has led to some overbuild taking place at the hands of Openreach which has opened up the possibility of competitive Internet service taking place in those areas.

But this time it is to expand in to rural East Anglia. Initially B4RN instigated an effort to create a fibre backbone from Telehouse North to Lowestoft by leasing some dark-fibre infrastructure. The first building to benefit will be Scole Community Centre, which most likely will be used as a public-awareness “launchpad” for B4RNorfolk’s effort along wiht serving as a core node for the network as what a lot of village halls do in the B4RN networks.

Some of this effort will overbuild established Openreach infrastructure but this will provide some level of competition in the affected communities. Let’s not forget that the kind of broadband service is symmetrical Gigabit fibre-to-the-premises Internet which will place “established” providers on notice.

It is another effort by the full-fibre networks that service rural areas to raise the bar for real broadband in that kind of market.

B4RN video which describes how they brought real broadband to the country

Article

VIDEO How B4RN’s Community 1Gbps FTTP Broadband Network Began | ISPReview.co.uk

From the horse’s mouth

B4RN

Promo video – Click / Tap to play

Digging For The Future video – Click / Tap to play

My Comments

If you are wanting to know what B4RN is all about, have a look at these two videos which underscore this effort.

Here, it is about the local community preparing a local fibre-optic infrastructure to bring in Gigabit-class real broadband in to their rural area in the North of England. This was more so where BT Openreach were showing very little attention to the rural areas, with them claiming they would offer 95% coverage of the UK and rural communities questioning which areas will represent the 5% that will miss out.

There is an emphasis on the community-focused effort where everyone pitches in to prepare and lay down the infrastructure for this fibre-optic service. The second video, “Digging For The Future”, even had a glimpse at a network-speed-test screenshot where the application’s needle hit the maximum, showing that there is real high-speed broadband available here.

I would see this and the Gigaclear efforts as a point of encouragement for country dwellers who fear they are being treated like second-class citizens when it comes to next-generation broadband.

B4RN progresses on bringing Gigabit broadband to rural North England

Article

B4RN Bring 1Gbps Broadband to 1,600 Rural Homes in North England | ISP Review

Previous Coverage

The soil has been turned for fibre-optic Internet in rural Yorkshire (14 January 2015)

A fibre network to cover Lancashire’s rural parishes (22 August 2011)

My Comments

Yorkshire Dales By Kreuzschnabel (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or FAL], via Wikimedia Commons

B4RN reaches in to more of North England with real broadband

In 2011, there was a valiant effort that started off to cover parts of the north of England with real broadband Internet service. This was in the form of B4RN (Broadband For Rural North) which is a community effort that is based on local contribution including the contribution of personal effort to deploy the service. The standard of this service is a pure-play symmetrical Gigabit fibre-to-the-premises broadband service but B4RN are facilitating VoIP telephony in conjunction with Vonage, an American pure-play VoIP provider who has set up presence in the UK.

This effort has encompassed Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria and there has been strong local interest and participation because of the fact that BT have been neglecting many rural areas. This state of affairs is something that a lot of people who dwell or work in rural areas sadly experience. The rollout has had the locals face many problems relating to its deployment and had them work out how to solve them.

Just lately, the B4RN effort has connected 1600 premises with 100 connected per month with the figure driven by the available effort. It has yielded a 65% service takeup with the price payable by end users being GBP£30 per month for the symmetrical Gigabit unlimited service and a GBP£150 connection fee.

As well, most of the original network, which encompasses 800km of core network, has been laid but the B4RN effort is expanding to more of rural North England. The same effort has been able to “pick up” areas where other projects have failed like Cumbria’s Fibre GarDen scheme.

I have read some accounts on the Yealands page where this network has enabled small businesses and community organisations. One of these is a small garage (Facebook link) who specialise in tuning cars for performance being able to exchange files with a partner based in Blackpool to modify engine-management units in order to performance-tune those cars. As well, the St. Johns Anglican church in Yealand which is one of those archetypal English village churches, ended up being connected to the B4RN broadband network and took advantage of this technology to “broadcast” a funeral service that they hosted to family members based in Sydney, Australia. They even want to take this further for sharing the wedding and funeral services that they host with participants who are separated by distance.

Like with Gigaclear, B4RN raised the issue of BT Openreach overbuilding their infrastructure but it may be seen as an effort to nawt because of a significant customer base who have invested in it. A question that may end up being raised is whether B4RN will end up becoming wholesale infrastructure for other retail ISPs rather than just an “end-to-end” provider. This would encompass the availability of multiple-play services via that infrastructure.

What B4RN is showing is that the rural areas have as much need for real broadband as urban areas and is highlighting that these areas can be about moving towards the country or starting a business there without losing the concept of real broadband.

The soil has been turned for fibre-optic Internet in rural Yorkshire

Articles

Yorkshire Dales By Kreuzschnabel (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or FAL], via Wikimedia Commons

More Yorkshire villages to benefit from real broadband

B4YS Start Rural FTTH Broadband Rollout for Yealand, Silverdale and Storth | ISPReview

B4RN brings fibre to B4YS country | ThinkBroadband

From the horse’s mouth

B4YS

Home Page

My Comments

Real broadband is coming to some parts of rural Yorkshire sooner than you think. Here, the B4RN group who established fibre-optic Internet in some parts of rural Lancashire have cut in to the large Yorkshire county, especially Yealand, Silverdale and Storth because these villages abut Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Here, the B4RN community-funded Internet group have turned the soil for the fibre-optic links and have achieved Stage One funding of GBP£101,000 without need for any state aid. This capital is to establish the core network. This is achieved through shares being sold to local residents and local businesses offering to lend capital to the effort and landowners offering labour towards the effort.

They are using a low-impact mole plough so that the land that the fibre-optic connections pass through isn’t disturbed heavily. Use of private land is totally with the landowner’s permission as it should be and there is encouragement for landowners to help with the work of installing the fibre-optic cable.

They intend to have the first premises connected sometime this year but there have been issues of this requiring the second-stage funding of a similar amount and B4YS are building up that capital. Users benefit from a Gigabit-throughput unlimited broadband service for £30 per month VAT inclusive and a one-off connection fee of £150.

If the B4YS project takes off well when it comes to connections, this could be a chance for this chapter of the B4RN project to work outwards and service more of the North Yorkshire villages, thus creating a force for real broadband Internet in the rural communities there.

But what is being allowed for here in the UK is for local communities and small businesses to deploy fibre-optic broadband to serve these small communities to allow them to benefit from real broadband Internet. This is alongside the BT Openreach service who are establishing fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband Internet in most of the UK and is a way to use competitive services to achieve the same goal.

A fibre network to cover Lancashire’s rural parishes

News Articles

thinkbroadband :: B4RN to deploy 1Gbps fibre network to rural parishes in Lancashire

Web site

B4RN website

My comments

Another valiant effort is taking place to connect rural England to real broadband Internet. This time it is happening in Lancashire’s rural areas north of Lancaster.

This is being achieved through a community-benefit company called “B4RN” which stands for “Broadband for Rural North”. The service is a fibre-to-the-premises service that is being provided to homes, farms and small businesses in these rural parishes. They have a goal to cover all of the 5162 properties but are working it in three phases. This is with the digging of the first phase to commence around Christmas 2011 and the first subscribers on board by January 2012.

What is interesting is that the capital for the effort is being raised through a share issue to the community and that the company is established as a “community-benefit” company where the assets are there for the community rather than being sold off if anything happens to the company.

The effort for he broadband rollout is being driven through shared local labour. It doesn’t matter whether it is to dig the necessary trenches or lay down the conduit and fibre-optic cable in order to connect up the properties. There is even support for training and upskilling locals into these areas where necessary and even the business’s office labour is local-based. One of the videos on the B4RN site even related this effort to how mains electricity was brought to rural Lancashire in the 1930s, through the use of community effort in preparing the infrastructure for the service.

At the moment, B4RN are selling the 1Gbps broadband services for £30 / month tax inclusive and with a £150 connection fee. A good question that may be raised with this service is whether B4RN would be looking at supplying VoIP telephony and / or IPTV as part of an extra-cost option or primarily offer a “purely-data” service for their customers. This is although most next-generation services typically will be expected to offer a “single-pipe triple-play” service with TV and telephony down the same connection as part of their service pack.

This service is another example of how rural communities can become active about bringing real broadband Internet to their areas rather than bemoaning the lack of the service. It also put forward the case for use of fibre-optic technology to deliver broadband to farms rather than unreliable radio services.