The small broadband not-spot of Erbistock near Wrexham was announced back in April as the location of the next fibre deployment by Rutland Telecom, the small company enabling broadband through fibre-to-the-cabinet technology. Rutland Telecom estimated the cost of connecting up Erbistock at around £50,000 for 80 households, around £625 per households. The BBC revealed on Saturday that BT had quoted the village £550,000 to provide a similar broadband link.
"We've been able to do this work for £50,000. I'm not sure why BT said it would cost so much more, but essentially this is a case of community action and a small company working together.
"This is now the first Welsh notspot area to receive broadband using this method. We hope to go live in October."
David Lewis, (Managing Director) Rutland Telecom
The residents of Erbistock will be receiving a massive speed boost, getting speeds of up to 40Mbps from the new Rutland Telecom connections. A BT spokesperson explained that the high costs were because of the long line length from the nearest BT exchange Bangor-on-Dee, and that any solution would need to be provided on a wholesale basis to other providers.
Erbistock residents are also looking in to covering some of the costs of the new broadband connections through grants available under the Welsh Assembly's broadband support scheme which allows funding of up to £1000 per applicant to enable a broadband connection.
Oh man.. here we go :)
Hopefully Rutland will publish the actual costs when done to see how their estimate held up.