Airband - Rural Optic

Airband are currently well underway installing their Rural Optic FTTP system to my location in Herefordshire. (fibre cable to the premises served from a microwave backhaul rather than their original over the air to the premises system). In theory this system seems to offer excellent prospects but I believe that to date it has only gone live in parts of Shropshire and I would very much like to hear of any actual users experiences so far.

We are in south Worcestershire and a few months behind you. They are gathering support to see if there is enough interest to fund our area via Gigabit vouchers.

About 3 weeks ago they had a meeting in the village hall, their MD gave a presentation and a Q&A session. I came away completely disillusioned and of the opinion that they could not organise a p**s up in a brewery. But they are offering two packages 150/50Mbps or 250/75Mbps at extremely attractive prices.

They aim to enable a large loop south of Worcester going through Kempsey, Ryall, Upton, Welland, Guarlford and back to Worcester.It will be FTTP but initially using a Gigabit capable wireless backhaul. In due course this will be replaced with full Fibre and they will offer faster speeds.

Guarlford is already live and there is one Airband test on this site's speed map showing 45/28Mbps.

I will be interested to here how you get on with them.

We also had a village hall presentation back in May and were told that we should be up and running in about 2 months or so. So here we are some 4 - 5 months later and although the cable installation is going well the backhaul remains unresolved. The cable installation work is being carried out by sub contractors and their operatives seem very good and most accommodating given that we are talking about single width country lanes and during harvest time.
As regards Airband, although the few individuals with whom we are in contact seem very responsive, it is too early to tell how efficient an organisation as a whole they are.
I will keep you posted as things progress.