Subject: [gaia] Fwd: [ciresearchers] DIY broadband pioneers reaching out to remote areas of Britain

From: Arjuna Sathiaseelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 05:07:49 +0100

relevant to the discussions we had yesterday..

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: michael gurstein <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 October 2014 00:48
Subject: [ciresearchers] DIY broadband pioneers reaching out to remote
areas of Britain
To: [email-masked]

*Sent:* Tuesday, October 07, 2014 12:32 AM
*Subject:* DIY broadband pioneers reaching out to remote areas of Britain

>From today’s FT

*DIY broadband pioneers reaching out to remote areas of Britain*

By Emma De Vita

[image: Picture by Jon Super for The Financial Times newspaper. Pic for
Annabel Cook Picture re story about the lengths business people have gone
to to mitigate poor broadband connection, be that driving to the pub to use
its fast broadband or picking up a spade to install fibre optic cables
themselves. John is a video producer and film maker who became involved
with the B4RN community action group and joined the rest of his village to
dig trenches to lay fibre optic cable after BT told them they weren't going
to do it. Pic shows shows John Hamlett with a team 'blowing', cables by the
village of Borwick near Kirby Lonsdale, England, Wednesday Oct. 1, 2014.
(Photo/Jon Super 07974 356-333)]©Jon Super Video producer John Hamlett
installing fibre optic cable for Lancashire’s B4RN, near Borwick

The acrobatic feats some UK businesses perform to get a decent internet
speed can provoke a sense of wonder. It might be a desperate dash to upload
content in a local pub that has superfast broadband, juggling three types
of technology to make a feeble connection to the cloud, or even swapping a
laptop for a spade to help lay fibre optic cable.

To those in less developed countries, these might be trivial concerns. The
UK average internet connection speed of 11.1 mbps ranks 16th globally
<http://www.akamai.com/dl/whitepapers/akamai-soti-a4-q214.pdf?campaign_id=F-MC-22494&curl=/dl/whitepapers/akamai-soti-a4-q214.pdf&solcheck=1&WT.mc_id=soti_Q214&>,
according to Akamai. But for British businesses experiencing data transfers
that fall well short of these norms, it can be a life-threatening issue
that requires workarounds that are both ingenious and dispiriting at the
same time.

*The pub as the broadband hub*
John Readman is co-founder of cycling tour business Ride25
<http://www.ride25.com/>, and works from his village home in Catterton,
North Yorkshire. “I get a faster internet connection up a mountain in the
Swiss Alps than I do here,” he complains. A customer of BT, the former UK
telephone monopoly, his typical upload speed is 0.3 mbps – problematic for
an online business with a visual product to sell. “I need to constantly
upload photos and videos of cycling trips to the website.”

He usually sets a video to upload overnight when bandwidth is better but
more often than not he will have to drive to his local pub to upload files.
“It does have its upside as you can get a sneaky pint in but internet
businesses should be run from anywhere and the infrastructure should be
there.” BT has refused to install fibre optic broadband, telling Mr Readman
his house is too remote.

*The service juggler*
Mark Maclure, founder and MD of marketing communications agency Stream Comms
<http://www.streamcomms.com/>, used to perform his own broadband
gymnastics. Based in a rural business park in Buckinghamshire, Mr Maclure
until last month managed three different broadband technologies after BT
told him a fibre optic connection was not feasible. “We are an agency that
builds and runs web apps for clients globally, and we rely on broadband for
our cloud-based working. The broadband issue is the biggest threat to our
business,” he explains.

To mitigate a poor service, he had been forced to use a BT ADSL line, EE
mobile WiFi and a wireless Village Networks connection – though he has just
swapped this threesome for one fibre optic line bought by the business
park’s landlord.

“It’s much better now we are getting faster broadband speeds. Life is
becoming much more productive,” Mr Maclure says with relief. “The amount of
money it has cost us to get a decent broadband speed and the lost people
days trying to get a connection is not something I would like to spend too
much time thinking about.”

*Dig for downloads*
Frustration has forced an increasing number of communities to take matters
into their own hands and simply install the fibre optic infrastructure
themselves. “If we can do it then anyone can do it,” says Chris Conder, a
farmer’s wife and founding member of Lancashire-based community action
group B4RN <http://b4rn.org.uk/>. She speaks, spade in hand, from a
windswept field alongside nine colleagues, who are there to fix a network
blockage. “It is about the community doing it for the community,” she adds.

B4RN draws on the help of 400 volunteers, many of whom are retired farmers,
to install 1,000 mbps fibre optic broadband. Since 2012, B4RN has networked
20 remote villages, using locals to dig the trenches. They buy the
materials direct from Scottish supplier Emtelle. A non-profit organisation,
B4RN offers shares to diggers and landowners who in return receive a direct
fibre connection. Users pay £30 a month for the service, which also
includes free phone lines.

John Hamlett, a video producer based in Gressingham, was struggling with
his upload speeds and eagerly watched B4RN’s rollout. “I knew someone in a
village nearby who had B4RN and I would give them a ring to use their
broadband. Something I had tried uploading over 12 hours uploaded in six
minutes there.” Mr Hamlett became his village broadband champion,
organising the community to raise the £30,000 needed for materials to bring
fibre optic broadband to 70 households.

Mr Hamlett is one of the 40 volunteer diggers who help across the whole
network, maintaining the cables already installed and bringing it to other
villages. “It has created a lot of good community spirit. People come along
with cake to say ‘thanks for networking my house’.” He has even launched a
new online business, WeUpload, to help others with poor broadband to upload
their files using his B4RN connection.

*The co-op that roared*
Another community action group, Cybermoor
<http://www.cybermoor.org/cybermoor/cybermoor>, launched in 2001 in Alston,
Cumbria, claims to be the first broadband co-operative in England. It laid
its first cables in 2009 but has since outgrown its amateur roots to become
a serious broadband supplier, used by companies such as mailroom supplier
Totalpost Services. Hugo Raddon, IT manager at Totalpost’s Alston
headquarters, says the service connected its three offices across the UK.
“There’s no way we could have done that without Cybermoor,” he says.

Hooking up a remote farm that can cope with unexpected outages is one thing
but connecting a large business that needs 24/7 support is another. “The
plan for Cybermoor Networks is to stay ahead of the game in terms of
bandwidth and infrastructure, which has been quite a challenge over the
years for a small co-operative based in a remote area,” says Daniel Heery,
Cybermoor Network’s project manager.

The solution has been to give the running of the network to a private
company, Briskona, while the community co-operative retains ownership of
the fibre optic network itself. “We handed over the operations to them
earlier this year because it was getting too complicated. It’s easier for
the community to own the pipes and another company to operate the
day-to-day running of it,” says Mr Heery.

*Further reading: London ‘It starts to feel like the late 1990s’*

Businesses in rural communities are not the only ones forced into
performing connection contortions, *writes Emma De Vita*. London businesses
have suffered too – even near the Silicon Roundabout hub for digital
businesses.

“Like many companies around the Roundabout, we faced speeds on legacy BT
phone lines that just weren’t up to snuff,” explains Alex Klein, co-founder
of build-your-own computer company Kano. “By the time you reach 20 people,
it starts to feel like the late 1990s.” He says a move further east to
Whitechapel solved the problem.

One of London’s so-called “not-spots” is Rotherhithe, where locals are
collaborating to bring about their own solution after BT’s refusal to
install fibre. Damian Belson is a founder of the Rotherhithe Broadband Group
<http://energise16.co.uk/>. “There are 12,000 residents here and
three-quarters of them have less than 2 mbps,” he says. “I work from home a
lot but I have to have a serviced office just so that I can send large
files.” With 200 businesses in the area, Mr Belson says fibre is critical.

Though in its early days, the group has garnered the support of 500
residents and estimates the cost of installing fibre at £3.5m, though the
group’s business model is yet to be decided. One possibility is to charge
users £20 a month including line rental, with discounts and free WiFi spots
available for those who cannot afford it. “We could become a non-profit
organisation offering affordable broadband for all,” says Mr Belson.

-- 
Arjuna Sathiaseelan | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/