Residents in Newton and Stape, both located in North Yorkshire can now look
forward to vastly improved broadband coverage thanks to Fibrestream and its
NextGenUs strategic partnership.
The deployment of a wireless network fed by fibre based broadband is not
exactly new, but the issue for many areas of the UK is finding someone willing
to do the leg work and getting funding to build the infrastructure. In the case
of Newton and Stape it has taken a fibre feed from a school that runs for 20km
into the village to then be fed out to the wireless network. The NextGenUs blog
has pictures of the hardware
used.
The Fibrestream approach is interesting as it is a firm that builds the
networks, but these are built so that they can be handed over to the
users/community it was built for. The about page on
Fibrestream’s website goes into more detail over how their approach works.
With the service supplying up to 10Mbps now, and with apparently potential
to increase capacity to handle 100Mbps in the future, there is some degree of
future proofing. With the forthcoming Universal Service Commitment (supported
by both major political parties) setting a target of 2Mbps, then if firms like
Fibrestream can meet and exceed this for a reasonable price they stand a good
chance of winning work when the nascent Network Development and Procurement
Group finally starts working on tenders. A lot hinges on how the USC is
handled, e.g. single contracts for a UK region, or will it have a much greater
resolution allowing solutions more suited to individual community needs.
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As a fixed wireless residential user on a commercial service, I appreciate that speeds are often the only “headline” that interest commentators,but it’s the reliability and consistency of FW that matters if you’ve long line ADSL.
From their blog “NextGenUs UK CIC is bound by regulation to reinvest the surplus generated from operating the network and will do so by deploying FttH (Fibre to the Home) connections to local residents and businesses over the course of 2010”
Must be congratulated, how refreshing, hope the Rates man does not get in the way of progress.
Fibre as far as they can and then a relay of radios.
I would love to know the cost per bit compared to BT’s BET.
Good for them – this is the way to go. Stuff waiting for the government to take care of everything just get on with it and do it yourselves.
If Kijoma can do 50Mbps / 10Mbps then VM is even screwed.
But how many houses in a street can wireless deliver 50M/10M to at the same time ? One ?
Oh Herdwick, how many houses can adsl deliver up to 2meg to from an exchange? this is tons better than anything BT can do for these people… I think they are to be congratulated for their JFDI innovation. Rock on, Power to the People.
What do the users pay and what does the school charge for the connection?
This is why I dont understand why fibre been fed to public buildings isnt used more in bad coverage areas, my local co-op is renting bandwidth from a local school since a BT dsl a while back. It gives money back to the public sector as well.
in my last post I meant a BT dsl related outage.
herdwick
Wireless appears to be a temporary solution in Newton and Snape pending the rollout of FTTH by NextGenUs in 2010
Quite a lot of the south is being covered more by Kjioma, with the eventual speed being 50/10 (currently areas around Portsmouth).
Even better than VM… (not too sure about usage allowances though for the ‘unlimited’ option).
@herdwick
Well if VM can get away with minimum backhaul per cab and that provides reasonable speeds, I’d guess just having to feed 1 transmitter should be relatively easy.