UK : B4RN is a community fibre network offering

bealtine

http://b4rn.org.uk/

Quote:

"B4RN is a community fibre network offering fibre to every home providing 1000 megabits per second (1 gigabit) futureproof connection for £30 a month. You do not have to buy shares to get a connection, but the more people who invest in this network the faster it will be built. There is no hope for many of us in this area to get ‘superfast’ broadband so we are doing it ourselves. This is not a big company from ‘outside’ doing it, it is us, the people of rural Lancashire. Latest newsletters are on the ‘news’ tab at the top of the page and on the links above and the posts below you will find lots more information.2

funnyname

Power to the people

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9711150.stm

Housing density in some parts of rural Ireland means this would be a goer here as well.

Kaner2004

I would pay big money for something like this.
If someone knocked on my door and said "we will bring fibre with 1Mbps broadband to your door for €100 PM, but you have to give us €2000 up front for the connection" - I would bite their hand off, and so would most people who live near me.

cyberdoyle

Community power, that is what is driving it, born out of desperation having been ignored by the telcos for the past 10 years, and not believing the current promises either. The people are digging it themselves. By the people, for the people. That's the way to do IT.

bealtine

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2133261/The-Dig-Society-action-In-scene-worthy-Ealing-comedy-villagers-waiting-broadband-create-40-MILE-trench-lay-cable.html

"The villagers – in Lancashire’s Forest of Bowland – decided to take matters into their own hands after coming to the conclusion that BT ‘would never get round to’ providing them with an efficient broadband service.

Computer expert Barry Forde, who lives with 500 other residents in Quernmore, one of the villages that will benefit from the move, is the man behind the project to link the houses to a state-of-the-art fibre-optic network."

cyberdoyle

Its actually a very good article from the Mail, they did a good story. It used some great photos from a local (gifted) amateur too which was nice to see. More on his flickr album here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martyndews/sets/72157629710065823/with/6886866436/
Its amazing how much talent a community has.

bealtine

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/broadband/9226314/The-villagers-digging-for-victory.html

I doubt this piece is true : "supplying 1,400 homes with internet speeds of one gigabit per second – roughly 10 times faster than at present"
Apart from that glaring journalistic error it's a good piece

cyberdoyle

ignore the typo, but yes, its a gigabit a second. 1000 megabits. 1000 times faster or more than most of the people in those parishes get now. Lots of them can't even get dial up the lines are so bad.
and its gonna be symmetrical.
for £30 a month.

clohamon

Really inspirational stuff.

The important thing is that they catalogue in detail how they do or did everything; the bureaucratic and legal problems, suppliers, the business model, civil engineering specifications, ownership etc., so that others can copy it.

I don't know how much of the process is relevant to an Irish context but it would be a great primer for communities here that wanted to get started.

cyberdoyle

thanks for that comment clohamon, that is exactly what we are trying to do, be totally transparent and let others benefit from our successes, frustrations and problems so they can copy the good stuff and learn how to surmount obstacles. I think it applies to Ireland or any other country that has a good phone network. Places without telephones just bash on and install fibre.

Its where an incumbent telco has a vested interest in preserving their monopoly and leeching the few remaining assets from copper infrastructure that we get these issues. They tend to bag all the funding to patch up their network by enabling cabinets. This is so wrong, because the whole job will be to do again in another few years, and those without a decent connection now will still not have one. Cabinets won't work for people more than a km away from them. Bonded lines don't work because a lot of rurals are on DACS line splitters due to shortage of copper pairs. Around here BT are still laying new copper. Madness.

They walk amongst us.