http://www.communityfibre.bt.com/ BT have just gave us a quote, nothing is signed or anything, my village is on step 4 on that site. There price includes doing all the work. I was wondering how we could cut the cost and i'm guessing laying the majority of the ducting would cut the cost by 50% but i really don't know. Our other option is to look for funding elsewhere via grants. I was also wondering would it be easier to cross private land owned by farmer i know and can get permission to do so, or just as easy to go along the roadside of the road.

If you self-dig, then you still need to leave a network that BT are willing and able to maintain in perpetuity. It might not turn out a huge amount cheaper.

Fell End is the one project I know of that has added "self-dig" to a BT-based project. You would probably get much better information about the potential savings if you tried to talk to the people who organised that.

Otherwise, you will almost certainly find that digging across farmland is considerably easier and cheaper than anything else. Digging the verge might be easy, but the roadworks surrounding it might not be. Digging the road will be expensive.

B4RN almost exclusively go across farmland, agreeing cost-free wayleaves with farmers, and recruiting farmers as labour for the digging. They run fibre into properties from the farms at the bottom of the garden.

You don't see them doing much on or near the highway if they can at all avoid it ... which must tell you something.

According to this link from ISPReview the Government are considering a new UK rural Broadband voucher scheme.

Considering is VERY different to in the pipeline, and is likely to be linked with the USO due in 2020

As for working in / on roads and pavements now days you need street works qualifications just to work on the road and open boxs ect. So god knows what you will need to dig up and lay duct.

Sorry but i think its a no go.

https://www.edinburghchamber.co.uk/news/edinburgh-sc...

might be applicable in your case

I followed that link - and noted that -

" Once the cabinet has been switched on, the school will be able connect to the internet at speeds of up to 80Mbps, allowing seamless streaming of video or downloading education materials." so is apparently not FTTP. (My Emphasis - ed)

It looks more as though the local PCP has had an FTTC Cabinet added, so that other subscribers on that PCP will be able to upgrade to VDSL if they wish.

Edited by deleted (Wed 21-Dec-16 09:54:26)

Thanks, well my village is in cumbria aswell. I am going to try and contact the Fell end, hopefully they will share some valuable knowledge and experience with us.
I have got permission to go across about 50% of the 3KM gap thus far, i'm going to try and get in contact with the last land owner soon and see what he says.

Well i may be able to go across farmland for the entire journey. This company http://www.tstrenching.co.uk/ helped http://www.ravenstonedale.org/features/fellendbroadb... them dig there 15KM network and there whole projecto cost £88,000. My village would only require 3KM of ducting so in theory if i can get landowners permission we could do our project for less than £30,000 especially if we did the laying of ducting on farmers land.

The wayleave needs to formalised, since if they is a fault Openreach may need access to dig up a big of duct and fix it. Fell End should be a good group to talk to as they will know some of the Openreach loops needed.