Tag: Rutland Telecom

Article

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear bringing its full fibre solution to Uppingham, Rutland

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear

Press Release

Uppingham First

Home Page

My Comments

There has been some previous broadband enablement taking place in Rutland in the UK. Here, a next-generation fibre-to-the-premises network was established in Hambleton which was the subject of a Skype interview with Matthew Hare from Gigaclear that I posted up on this site.

Now Uppingham is now the target of a next-generation fibre-to-the-premises network. This market town, which is 5 miles (8.05 km) as the crow flies or 5 minutes by car from Hambleton, has had its effort boosted through the assistance of the Uppingham First community partnership.

The effort is concentrated on the North East Quarter which encompasses The Beeches and the Uppingham Gate business park and is part of a 12-month rollout by Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom.

There is also a fixed-wireless service which will cover more of the Uppingham neighbourhood within its 25-mile radius, but I would also like to see the fibre service cover more of this town. This could be achieved as part of a gradual service-expansion effort as the initial rollout proves itself economically.

As those of you who follow HomeNetworking01.info know, this deployment, like other Gigaclear FTTP deployments, will offer the symmetrical bandwidth which will please a lot of Internet users in this town, including the small businesses.

As far as I am concerned, this could cause ripples through Rutland’s small towns and rural areas as the neighbourhoods ask for the real bandwidth in a similar way to what is happening in Oxfordshire.

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear Customers website

Press release

Video – BBC East Midlands Today TV interview

Link to video at YouTube

My Comments

I have previous covered the arrival of fibre-to-the-home broadband at Hambleton, a village in Rutland in the United Kingdom courtesy of Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom.

This included doing a Skype-based telephone interview on this network. Now I have seen and provided this video which exemplifies the benefit of this real broadband Internet service to this village.

An example of this was the Finch’s Arms pub which had experienced a different from of trade that a “local” wouldn’t experience. They had installed a Wi-Fi hotspot and there has been more through the till for them due to this broadband service. They also acquired more of the business traffic again due to the high-speed Internet traffic,

Of course, there was a change of life brought about buy the provision of this fibre-optic network with the city-style Internet service being exposed to these residents. Some were even achieving reliable Skype videoconferencing sessions with distant relatives while others were making telecommuting more feasible.

From what I have seen, this is an example of what can be done to enable a village or small country town with real Internet.

In response to the latest news that has happened with Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom in relation to the Hambleton fibre-to-the-premises rollout, I offered to organise an email exchange with a representative from this company about this broadband access network.

Matthew Hare replied to my email offering to do a short Skype-based telephone interview rather than an email interview. This allowed him and I to talk more freely about the Hambleton and Lyddington rollouts which I have been covering in HomeNetworking01.info .

Real interest in rural-broadband improvements

There are the usual naysayers who would doubt that country-village residents would not need real broadband, and I have heard these arguments through the planning and execution of Australia’s National Broadband Network.

But what Matthew had told me through this interview would prove them wrong. In the Lyddington VDSL-based fibre-to-the-cabinet rollout, a third of the village had become paying subscribers to this service at the time of publication. In the Hambleton fibre-to-the-premises rollout, two-thirds of that village had “pre-contracted” to that service. This means that they had signed agreements to have the service installed and commissioned on their premises and have paid deposits towards its provision.

Satisfying the business reality

Both towns have hospitality businesses, in the form of hotels, pubs and restaurants that need real broadband. For example, Matthew cited a large “country-house” hotel in Hambleton that appeals to business traffic and this hotel would be on a better footing with this market if they can provide Wi-Fi Internet service to their guests. Similarly, these businesses would benefit from improved innovative cloud-based software that would require a proper Internet connection.

As well, most of the households in these villages do some sort of income-generating work from their homes. This can be in the form of telecommuting to one’s employer or simply running a business from home.

The reality of a proper Internet service for business was demonstrated through the Skype call session with Matthew. Here, the Skype session died during the interview and when he came back on, he told me that the fault occurred at his end. He mentioned that he was working from home at another village that had the second-rate Internet service and affirmed the need for a proper broadband service that can handle the traffic and allow you to be competitive in business.

A commercial effort in a competitive market

Matthew also underlined the fact that this activity is a proper commercial venture rather than the philanthropic effort that besets most other rural-broadband efforts. He also highlighted that there were other rural-broadband improvements occurring around the UK, including the BT Openreach deployments. and this wasn’t the only one to think of.

But what I would see is that an Internet market that is operating under a government-assured pro-consumer pro-competition business mandate is a breeding ground for service improvement, especially when it comes to rural Internet service.

Conclusion

From what Matthew Hare had said to me through the Skype telephone interview, there is a real and probable reason why the countryside shouldn’t miss out on the broadband Internet that city dwellers take for granted.

Articles

thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear begin fibre-to-the-home deployment in Hambleton

From the horse’s mouth

Fibre-Optic Gigaclear Network for Rutland Village – Gigaclear Press Release

Rutland Telecom (Hambleton page) (Home)

My Comments

There has been previous coverage about Rutland Telecom establishing fibre-optic next-generation broadband in Hambleton, Leicestershire in the UK. Now Gigaclear are in the throes of laying down the fibre-optic infrastructure for the next-generation broadband.

The Hambleton network has been financed through private investors in the Hambleton village. Here, they would want to see a triple return in the form of financial growth, community togetherness and a real next-generation Internet service.

Of course, Rutland Telecom will be the main service provider for this town’s next-generation broadband service even though it is part of Gigaclear. The service is intended to be online in October 2011.

Significant features will include VoIP telephony and 50Mbps headline speed for the service. As well, the router, which will be an optical-network terminal will have 300Mbps dual-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi and a 4-port Gigabit Ethernet switch. This also includes a future proof software design that supports IPv6 networks, which I think are the way to go for next-generation broadband. Rutland Telecom could offer as an alternative an optical-network terminal that connects up to user-supplied broadband routers, which would be required for Wi-Fi hotspots that have advanced user control.

GigaClear and Rutland Telecom have higher expectations with a “fat pipe” data link between Hambleton and London as well as streaming of high-definition television in to this neighbourhood during the 2012 Olympics.

What I have liked about this development and the Lyddington development is that they have become a catalyst for villages and towns across the UK wanting to achieve real broadband Internet on a par with the cities.

News article

thinkbroadband :: Fibre optic broadband in rural areas: Lyddington

From the horse’s mouth

Rutland Telecom – Web site

My comments on this topic

The main thing that impressed me about this news was that a small local operator took up the gauntlet to establish a backhaul and next-generation Internet service for a rural village in England. It’s so easy to expect the big-time companies like the incumbent or competing telecommunications firms or established ISPs to provide this kind of service, but a small firm has decided to lay the groundwork with its fibre-to-the-cabinet operation for Lyddington and the surrounding villages.

There is an expectation for a service with 48Mbps maximum / 25Mbps average headline speed for this network, which was similar to what would be expected for most suburban next-generation broadband rollouts. It will be based on FTTC (fibre-to-the-cabinet) technology with the copper run to the customer’s door being based on VDSL2 technology. This technology has a greater throughput than  the commonly-deployed ADSL2+ but is designed for short copper runs. Here, it will be installed as a sub-loop unbundled setup where the street cabinet exists between the main telephone exchange and the customer’s telephone.

This deployment was considered feasible for environments where the service would facilitate a full takeup of 40-50 customers in a not-so-dense area.

The prices averaged around GBP30 / month including line rental and 600 minutes of calls to any landline in the UK. The hardware would be part of the installation cost and included a VDSL modem and a broadband router that isn’t wireless. It would be the time to look towards choosing a wireless broadband router of the kind that works with cable Internet for this setup if you want the wireless home network. A wireless router would cost GBP45 extra if you bought it from them.

Location issues

There are still a few questions that need to be asked concerning the Lyddington FTTC rollout and would affect next-generation broadband efforts in rural Britain. One is whether and how the larger properties like the farms would be covered by the next-generation broadband efforts? Could this mean that a street cabinet has to be deployed near a cluster of farm gates with longer VDSL2 runs?

Similarly, there could be a classic estate with a large manor house or similar building and smaller houses scattered further afield on the same property. Some of these estates may have the manor house occupied by the appropriate aristocrat or the manor house may be a National Trust museum or upscale boutique hotel. Here, there may be issues with making sure each lodging on the estate has access to the next-generation broadband, and there could be issues with whether to locate the FTTC street cabinet in these estates and where they should be located, especially to make sure that “His Lordship” in the manor has very good bandwidth.

Equipment issues

Another issue worth raising is whether the VDSL2 modems will be made available without a router so that customers can purchase their own wireless broadband router from a preferred retailer. One reason is that an increasing number of manufacturers may supply “future-proof” dual-WAN home-network routers that have a built-in ADSL2 modem as well as a Gigabit Ethernet port on the broadband side. The other reason is that people who know the ins and outs of Internet and home networking may know the best broadband router for their needs and may find the supplied unit not suiting their needs and just another box in their junk box.

Conclusion

At least a small company who has the country at its heart is making real efforts to provide next-generation Internet to the British countryside and could open the floodgates towards competitive rollout of such technology to this class of people.

I am not a paid spokesman for Rutland Telecom but, as I have said before in this blog, I do stand for the idea that people who live or work in the country don’t deserve second-class Internet service.  Therefore I applaud those efforts that are taking place to improve the Internet-access lot for these users.

STOP PRESS

If anyone is living in Denby Dale – the “Pie Village”, in West Yorkshire, Rutland Telecom are inviting people to register for next-generation broadband in this village and neighbouring villages. They need a target of at least 450 households and small businesses in this area to make their next FTTC project for this town come to fruition.

The registration form for this campaign is at the Rutland Telecom Website.