Tag: Rutland

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.

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.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Rutland Telecom to deploy fibre to Hambleton village

From the horse’s mouth

Internet service for Hambleton – Rutland Telecom

Rutland Telecom – Web site

My comments

Rutland Telecom is at it again with another UK village being wired up with next-generation broadband. Here, Hambleton which is near Oakham in Rutland, is being equipped with fibre-to-the-premises broadband.

They are achieving this goal in a similar community-driven model to the VDSL-based fibre-to-the-cabinet setup in Lyddington, Leicestershire which I have touched on in this site.

One thing that impressed me about this is that it is technically “ahead of its time”. Here, the setup uses an “active” point-to-point fibre arrangement rather than the commonly-deployed “passive optical network” arrangement. This is equivalent to moving a wired Ethernet network froam a hub wihch shared the bandwidth between the devices to a switch which gives each device its own bandwidth at the best speed. Here, the setup is future proof and capable of high speeds and increased bandwidth and can satisfactorily cope with the situation when the village becomes a town.

There had been 60% takeup on the offer to register for the next-generation broadband which shows real interest in better-standard Internet in the country. The service is intended to go live on (North-Hemisphere) Spring 2011.

This company is now encouraging other small UK communities to gain their help in setting up next-generation broadband. It could then be a step in the right direction for telecom co-operatives and similar companies to look towards raising the bar for a standard of Internet service normally taken for granted in urban areas.