Rural Broadband Co-operatives?

clohamon

Agreed, a mosaic of privately owned fibre rings is not the ideal solution, but with a failed market in rural areas and an irrelevant government, it may be the only one.

IoffL could help by approaching the telcos to provide a standard blueprint for interconnection to their systems and to ask them to consider offering time-limited build and manage packages to local communities.

Sponge Bob

Now the government has outline approval for the Unserved Rural Premises BB scheme I think it is time to bump this thread. How are things post the big frost TrekkyPJ ??

Anybody else done some work in their own areas, do tell.

trekkypj

We managed ok with the cold, though we did get snowed in!

I wrote to the minister telling him in nice terms he faced a digital divide if he didn't take steps to bring fibre closer to rural areas. I got an acknowledgment that they got the letter, other than that not much.

I'm looking at plotting some fibre routes in the area, and thinking about how best to hook up the fibre to the internet.

One thing I'm wondering is this - we had an NBS mast go live in the area in the last month, about 1.5km away from the village. Does anyone how do they usually hook up the 3 Ireland masts? Do they use fibre, or some other method?

If it's fibre, there may be some way of piggy-backing on their fibre backbone. That's option 1. If they're paying someone to provide the link, like Enet, we may be able to negotiate with them to extend it the 2km or so to supply a cabinet in the village, and from there we can lay fibre outwards, all over the townland.

Option 2 is using a radio link of some kind, like that used initially by CyberMoor in the UK, and hooking it up to a local-only fibre network. Trouble is, I'm not knowledgeable about the tech or the practical limitations of this - someone want to help me out?

Option 3 - laying new fibre all the way to an existing MAN or the M9 is probably too expensive. The distance and getting so many wayleaves is a big problem. We're talking a geographical distance of between 8k and 20km, depending on the route and ability to get the necessary wayleaves. Also, with all the works being done by the local authorities on rural roads to fix blocked drains, and so on, would make it more likely for breakages to occur in future if it happened again.

Sponge Bob

Hi,

this is not that complex, yes you need a wayleave for installation and access for repair as required ( both)

trekkypj wrote: »

The second is a major stumbling block - it would require a wayleave agreement between the private landowners who would own land on the proposed routes and the committee of people (co-op) building the network.

There would be legal costs involved most likely in registering these wayleaves, assuming they were agreed. It's not an insurmountable obstacle but one which would require considerable work and consideration on how to minimise the cost and bureaucracy of obtaining wayleave.

These do not require registration but they do require careful storage and supporting maps. After some common law period like 14 years they are established.

Ensure that the wayleaves are narrow in definition and for local bb access only. Find a recent group water scheme and get a copy of their wayleaves and find out what the process is, eg are there 2 or 3 Co-op people there at signing time.

Even better roll digs in with group water schemes if any are happening and call the fibre the 'SCADA ' system and make some noises about monitoring water meters using RFID tags ..blah waffle "smart" blah sh1te "green" '

The council just wants its roads back in one piece. You need to convince the chief area roads engineer you are not a pack of cowboys who will butcher the place and you will need public liability insurance which is not too dear.

PM me if you have time.

watty

Or monitoring septic tanks, group water schemes and Wind Turbines.

Sponge Bob

Tis only a matter of time before the septic tank gets it