Ambitious? Crazy? Rural Derbyshire Fibre Broadband

Hey All,

For those that have followed my posts before, i own a business in the rural Peak District and have in the last 6 months acquired Leased-Line connectivity to this site (just outside Baslow, Derbyshire).

Now, this area and the surrounding villages lack access to a decent internet connection, often long ends of BDUK infill cabs or EO lines that simply haven't been converted to FTTC / FTTP and the like. So, i was wondering if it would be worth capitalizing on our leased line connectivity at our business premises, and build out our own community fibre network, similar to B4RN etc.

It's very much a pipe dream at the moment, but if we were to utilise our current infrastructure, we effectively have our own metaporphical 'Headend' and backhaul.

Am i just being crazy or could we make it work??

1) I doubt if your Ts & Cs allow that.
2) What bandwidth have you got and how many prospective customers?
3) What would your Ts & Cs be for your customers?
4) How much would your business insurance be for such a venture? Including legal.
5) How would you do the physical "build out"? Would the council allow you to?
6) How much would the physical buildout cost you and which contractors would you use?
7) Would you build our speculatively like FTTC/P, or order by order like FTTPoD or your own leased line?
8) Whose engineers would you employ for ongoing maintenance?
9) What "Help" services would you provide for your customers? Hours and methods. Staff costs.

I'm sure there are many more such questions to consider.

I’d say crazy.

No, not crazy. Ambitious probably - but could all crash down when a commercial organisation suddenly appears.

That is how some of the smaller community partnerships started - one person needed a high spped connection and then expanded out. They found people locally who were prepared to invest their professional expertise at not cost to get it off the ground.

I saw a technical presentation by one group - it started in the pub one night with sketches on a beer mat and it went from there, and they supply connectivity to a local water resrevoir monitor. They supply through a mix of wired and wirelsss.

You might have a few hurdles on the contracta/legall side to overcome and may need an upgrade - technical and commerical to you leased line and certsinly not impossible

Usage of your leased line would actually be the least of your worries. All of that’s quite easily negotiable as needed. You’d need more than a single Gig circuit eventually for capacity and resilience depending on how many folks were signed up.

As I said on your earlier thread, the tech / equipment these days especially for GPON is quite cheap to come by and relatively easy to setup. There are dozens of use cases of small “neighbourhood” schemes stateside, in Oz and on the continent using for example the UISP gear from Ubiquiti. You can get their 8 PON port OLT with 2 x 10GbE uplinks for around a grand and their ONTs are around fifty quid each. Splitters and SC/APC leads are very cheap. Go on a 2-3 day fibre course and learn to prep fibre and splice and test. A half decent fusion splicer can be picked up for around a grand. Brand new Fujikuras are around £3.5K. Of course there’s the bigger players like Huawei, Adtran and Nokia but they are really geared up for the larger telco market. How ambitious are you?

The much tougher question is that of getting fibre plant in the ground - civils, permissions, wayleaves etc. Digging in anything other than soft verge is v. expensive. Then there’s street works licensing and insurance, PI etc etc. Pretty onerous. The “original” rural fibre CPs like B4RN and Gigaclear back in the days were famed for getting locals to donate their time, labour and land to help!

Get the fag lack business case scribbled up.

I would findout who owns the land as will need sort out wayleave if going to use fibre.
The other option is microwave links. https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/8895-setting-up-...

Also findout if there is a local politicians who whinges about "rubbish" Internet.

Ambitious yes, but also crazy.

The logistical, legal, and regulatory work required is incredible.
I would be amazed if your leased line t&c's allowed it.

Even if your t&c's allow it, if the circuit belongs to OpenReach (even if you didn't but it from them) they add a charge for their leased lines being used to aggregate FTTP to multiple premises.

For the sort of thing you are thinking of you are better using your own fibre.
That could be fibre you install via OFCOM code powers or using OpenReach's PIA, or just buying some dark fibre.

I'm afraid you need a strong reality check...

worth capitalizing on our leased line connectivity

we were to utilise our current infrastructure

You currently have no infrastructure to capitalize on.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I’d say crazy.

+1 but ain't all of us

Setting up a WiFi mast might be easier .

Here are some crazy stories of small FTTP deployments from other countries based on the Ufiber gear from Ubiquiti…

https://community.ui.com/stories/building-a-FTTH-GPO...

Some of the CBT’s may be familiar to folks with Openreach based FTTP here:
https://community.ui.com/stories/FTTP-Roll-out-in-a-...

This one is an MDU / flats (condos!) install:
https://community.ui.com/stories/UFiber-Deployment-i...

Yes, it does sound crazy but probably not much different to the ISP that came along round these parts, but before making any outlay, I would certainly check out what is on going by all and sundry locally - not just by OR, B4RN etc.

Who knows, you might end up like this area, whereas in early February there was no sign of FTTP ever coming along - OR checker even said no plans, even in the foreseeable future. Come middle of March I had FTTP connected by a local ISP company that suddenly said they were installing. The situation changed that fast. Do look at the gigabitvoucher website as well.

Lol - Thought i'd just do one big reply rather than try and do several posts haha.

My major driving force behind this was now we have some form of 'Fibre' infrastructure (in the form of a leased line) at our business, and by infrastructure, i was including our own ducting on site plus the new ducting that Openreach had laid down our drive etc, to run back to the nearest POP.

Alongside this, i'm friends with quite a few of the local farmers in the area so i was hoping some friendly help / come to some arrangement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@Bob:

Haven't quite ironed out the details of such operational levels just yet... was more trying to see if we could actually get something put in the ground / expanded out.
Lots of good questions to ask though - Will defo be of consideration.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@Zarjaz - Might need you for some splicing?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@MHC - Yes, defo local appetite for this, and not much hope from any commercial roll out that i can see, and even if OR did put an interest in, i doubt it would be done for 5-6 years.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@Phesant - Will be needing you for the equipment list....again haha. I wondered if it would be worth going full fibre like B4RN do, symmetrical service wise?

Again, i want this to be very community orientated and focused. There's no profit incentivisation around here, but would be nice to break even with costs considered in the long term.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------