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Next time you whinge about your slow-arse internet, spare a thought for a bunch of British farmers who have had to build, test, and install their own fibre network this year — from scratch.
A small community in Arkholme — a tiny village in rural Lancashire — realised that they were always going to be overlooked when it came to fast broadband. So they decided to take matters into their own hands and build their own network. That meant spinning their own fibre, digging channels across field, and laying cables, all in the name of internet. The BBC explains:
They have exploited all sorts of local expertise — from the Lancaster University professor who is an expert in computer networks to the farmer’s wife who has just retired from a career in IT support. The cooperation of local landowners has been vital — free access to fields has made it much cheaper to roll out the network. BT and other companies which have to dig up the country roads to lay fibre networks reckon it can cost as much as £10,000 to hook up one rural home — the people at B4RN reckon they can bring that down to around £1,000.
The result? Download speeds that are consistently over 900Mbps, which eclipses the speeds throughout the rest of the country, including London, by a country mile.
Sadly, though, the community has run out of money for the install, and is now seeking investment so it can complete the project and roll out the super fast connection to everyone in the village. Let’s hope it achieves it — because it’s an amazing example of what a community can get done when it pulls together. [BBC]
Image by zentilia/Shutterstock
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I suffer every single day at home from this bloody slow effing internet speed from f**king BT and SKY combined. This got the better of me ever since I moved up North East, living in a non cable zone is a royal pain!
I really hope http://b4rn.org.uk/ expands and help other communities.
Am I the only one that reads every post from ‘T’ in a Mr T voice?
Ah piddy da fool who don’t hayve fabar in.tar.net.
I know, it’s annoying isn’t it
(although now I know he’s up North I might mentally add a cloth cap, whippet and Northern twang to it as well)
I worked for a charity (that shall remain nameless) and they often need fast internet connections. When they ask BT for them to do it, the quote is often in the hundreds of thosuands, so instead, they use their close relationship with the farmers, jack their heavy machinery, use a tonne of volunteers, do it themselves in a couple of days, saving themselves a lot of money.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/archive/1.html?q=B4RN
Unless they can properly resurface the roads so we don’t get pot holes straight after then don’t bother.
Why should they have to resurface the roads to a better standard than the local councils do?
Across fields?
I hope they’ve got someone who can repair the cables every time a farmer ploughs them up.
Its funny installed and maintained by the villagers and when they say across fields they are running it along the boundry where farmers dont plough. though they did have an issue with field mice running through the ducting and chewing the cables.
http://b4rn.org.uk/
I’ve heard that before… Ten years or less later and suddenly they’ve still managed to plough it up.
Fair cop, I suppose if they dig them deep enough and route them close to the hedges as they can there is a minimal risk but still a chance that someone could plough it up.
I would like to see mor rural communities doing things like this as it would push the likes of VM and BT to get their asses into gear and sort out the rest of the ageing infrastructure in the UK.
I would also like to know what the backhaul they have is like back to TeleCity Manchester, and what the contention would be like. Either way 900mbit is better than the crappy 5.5mbit I get and the 256k that this village used to get.
Oh it’s a good thing alright, I don’t see it pushing BT much because its simply not economically viable for a company looking to make a profit. Probably never will be either. The weird thing about plotting fields is stuff seems to surface even if far deeper than the plough level. A field near me that’s been done every year just turned up yet another unexploded WW2 bomb.
BT are probably happy to have this out of their hands and (I expect) are still pocketing cash for the backhaul.
I want I want! Cant manage more than 2mbit around these parts:(