Tag: Gloucestershire

Article

More of the Cotswolds to benefit from real broadband

UPD 1Gbps FTTP Broadband Coming to 6,495 Premises in Gloucestershire UK | ISPReview.co.uk

From the horse’s mouth

FasterShire public-private Internet partnership

Press Release

My Comments

The Cotswolds is an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty located south of the centre of England. Because of this characteristic underscored by the rolling hills and the villages that have their buildings built out of the local stonework, it is another of those country areas that attract people who want to move out of the city to the country. It also attracts an artisan culture with a fair bit of local arts and crafts going on.

But what about making sure that these people who live and work in the Cotswolds have access to real Internet service? This problem is being rectified by a partnership between Gigaclear and the FasterShire public-private Internet-service partnership to bring full fibre broadband to the villages of Guiting Power, Chedworth, Whelford, Bilbury and Icomb.

This was initially a British Telecom project which covered Phase 1 of the rollout but the Gigaclear partnership has underscored that BT can’t have a clear run of the Phase 2 contracts. It is based on Gigaclear’s track record with supplying some of the small villages around the Home Counties with a future-proof fibre-to-the-premises broadband service, something regular readers of HomeNetworking01.info will be familiar with. It will still complement British Telecom’s efforts in this locale and the goal will be to have the Internet service pass 6,450 premises in the Cotswolds area and will break FasterShire’s goal of 90% broadband coverage.

Geoffrey Clifton Brown, who is the local MP for Cotswolds established an election promise to cover his electorate with real broadband at the door for all of his constituents.

As well, the Gigaclear solution isn’t just about fibre to the premises but also about Internet services with a subscriber-level bandwidth of a Gigabit/second symmetrically this achieving a service that is effectively future-proof for these areas. This also caters for the increasing trend towards video-conferencing and cloud-based computing in both the home and business computing applications.

What I would like to see for Gigaclear to achieve is to provide FTTH not just to new areas but as a competing service for areas that have an FTTC setup provided by BT Openreach so that they can be able to benefit from the higher throughput.

Keep up the good work in providing city-business-grade broadband to rural communities, Gigaclear and FasterShire!

Article

thinkbroadband :: Fibre broadband coming to Overbury and Conderton

My Comments

Another rural area in the UK has become “switched on” with next-generation broadband. This time, it’s the Overbury Estate in the Cotswolds. This area, which encompasses Overbury & Conderston has been known to be up-to-date and to be the first to come with running water, power and telephone service.

Here, it is being equipped with point-to-point Gigabit fibre broadband which has been said to be the envy of most areas around the world. This is where each customer who has their own fibre-optic run has the full bandwidth of their broadband service to their home network. It is like what happens with the Ethernet switches which provide the full bandwidth to the Ethernet sockets.

Like other “next-generation” broadband rollouts that have been occurring across the UK and Europe, this has allowed the online benefits of city life yet also have the peaceable and community-driven benefits of rural life.

One addition that has been factored in to this rollout is a “drop-in” hub for ad-hoc access to broadband by villagers, business, craftspeople, and community organisations. What I also like of this is that it can be used to help people who aren’t computer-literate get their hands wet with online life.

Let this be a chance to prove whether a “point-to-point” or “active” fibre-optic broadband service can really work and be a viable upgrade for existing next-generation broadband services.