Rural Broadband Options (help!)

Hi There,

I live in the small village of Farnley Tyas. Our internet is awful and we are not on any of the rollout plans for fibre cable. We have had a community meeting and we are looking at options. However, none of us are that tech savvy. The two options that I am aware of at the moment are :

1) Run our own cables to the village. We have permisison from local landowners to dig into their fields to lay cable. That is about all we know at the moment, how easy is this to do? Coudl someone explain the ins and outs (as if you were tlakiing to a child, I really do not know enough on the subject)

2) A nearby village has superfast broadband already. We hear that it is possible to set up a big transponder in the other village and broadcast it over to us. As you can tell form the way I have worded it, something we know VERY little about. Any info would be appreciated.

3) Anything else you can suggest.

I have emailed just about every rural supplier and none of them are interested so it looks like we are going to have to do this on our own. We are 2 miles from the nearest exchange. Boffins, ASSEMBLE! (Please help).

1. Basically running your own cables, means laying 75mm diameter PVC pipes in the ground, so that subsequent cable/fibre can be sent down these, with inspection chambers at regular spacing. In short something farmers would be used to doing when constructing a soak away. Exact specification of depth escapes me but 18-24 inches comes to mind.

2. Transponder, as in point to point wireless, i.e. a pair of something like http://www.solwise.co.uk/wireless-outdoor-bridging-e... which can cover in theory 4 miles if you can get them positioned so they can see each other. http://www.dragonwifi.co.uk/ are doing effectively this sort of thing in parts of Wales so may share some information. One goes on a property that has good broadband and an arrangement is made to have a line at that property, importantly with a provider that is happy for it to be sub let.

3. To get a community effort going you need to find someone who is happy effectively becoming the network guru and this can be the hard thing

1. Running your own cables.
Running cables isn't enough - they need to connect to something, and have equipment to run a service over them. Do you want to run your own ISP business? Then you might consider something like B4RN - one of the most successful rural groups, digging their own fibre in.
http://b4rn.org.uk/

They regularly run "show and tell" days for other like-minded community groups, like this one:
http://b4rn.org.uk/b4rn-emtelle-show-tell-day-8/

Their facebook page has a lot of pictures of them digging in the fibre.

Their business plan in 2011: http://www.b4rn.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/B4...
Their business plan in 2013: http://b4rn.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/B4RN-B...

2. You can do this ad-hoc, by use of wireless networking, including use of unlicenced or lightly-licenced spectrum in the 5GHz bands.

Some equipment can help set up backhaul to the next village - using point-to-point wireless like
Ubiquiti Nanobeam M (or "ac")

And some equipment to help set up a wireless access network for multiple homes in the village, like
Ubiquiti Nanostation M (or "ac") at each house
Ubiquiti Rocket M (or "ac") as a central basestation.

If there are a lot of homes (more than 20) you might need multiple base-stations.

You might be interested in this thread over at Ubiquiti:
https://community.ubnt.com/t5/Business-Talk/Setting-...

If you want to follow steps 1 or 2, then someone is going to have to become tech-savvy.

3. Don't forget that a community can fund BT to supply their village, if it isn't in any BDUK plans. See the FAQs here:
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/the-big-build/F...

In reply to a post by JSSykes:

I live in the small village of Farnley Tyas. Our internet is awful and we are not on any of the rollout plans for fibre cable.

Having employed Google to try and work out where Farnley Tyas is! - I presume you have checked on http://www.superfastwestyorkshire.co.uk/ and emailed [email protected] to confirm you are not currently in the BDUK areas planned to be covered in future.

Before considering rolling out/funding your own network, can I suggest you all lobby your local councillors and MP's to try and get your area included in future BDUK planning.

Response to number 2:-
I know you aren't in Scotland but the Community Broadband Scotland has some excellent case study documents you can read to get an idea how they go about taking broadband into rural areas. Most are done using wireless kit. Go to http://www.hie.co.uk/community-support/community-bro... and down the left hand side there are links to related documents that are well worth a read.

I live in an area that typically has connections varying from 3Mbps ADSL to no ADSL. I am currently using 2 Ubiquiti Nanobeam dishes in a point-to-point link to beam an 80Mbps "fibre" connection in a village 5km away using wifi to my house and it works great. Next phase is to get the neighbours connected too!

In reply to a post by gt94sss2:

Before considering rolling out/funding your own network, can I suggest you all lobby your local councillors and MP's to try and get your area included in future BDUK planning.

Good advise to check you arent actually included in a plan somewhere first.

If your local council or MP is anything like mine though, be prepared to be ignored and eventually fobbed off with lame excuses for many many months and then years. "Exploring Solutions" is their favourite line round my way!

In reply to a post by gt94sss2:

In reply to a post by JSSykes:

I live in the small village of Farnley Tyas. Our internet is awful and we are not on any of the rollout plans for fibre cable.

Having employed Google to try and work out where Farnley Tyas is! - I presume you have checked on http://www.superfastwestyorkshire.co.uk/ and emailed [email protected] to confirm you are not currently in the BDUK areas planned to be covered in future.

I'd had a look where it was too, and meant to say something on this too.

Unfortunately, it looks like the village is part of Kirklees - which is the one constituent part of West Yorkshire that refused to be part of the SFWY project in phase 1.

They have joined into phase 2 now, but I can't help wondering if the area will end up somewhat underserved compared to the other councils.

Did you try Gigaclear who specialise in your sort of rural installations? You could be to small.

For a viable project you need to find a suitable local back haul connection perhaps via Vodafone for example. You also need enough people to commit financially to make the project viable.

FWIW Gigaclear don't use blown fibre, and only use trunking where cables run under roads. Joining fibres is timeconsuming and requires special equipment. The number of joints has to be kept to a minimum.

If you can't form a viable Gigaclear project perhaps with other local villages, then trying to follow in the footsteps of B4RN would be well worth considering.