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Mast for Uppingham gets funding in the end
Wednesday 26 September 2012 09:53:54 by Andrew Ferguson

Rutland was one of the first areas to announce BT as its BDUK project partner, but that is not the end of the broadband story in the area, as Uppingham First has continued to press ahead with its plans for a 30m high wireless broadband mast.

Planning permission had already been granted for the erection of the mast to the south of Welland Vale Nursery, which is located just to the east of Uppingham. The original plan had been to EEC funding to fund the project, but that fell through and a new application has resulted in half of the money needed to erect the mast coming via DEFRA, the full amount needed is £360,000. This award is part of the £20m of funding for rural broadband solutions to cover that final few percentage points of an area where more commercial solutions via the BDUK projects will not reach.

The mast should help provide a fixed wireless broadband solution to rural properties (a potential radius of 25 miles is suggested), and may also prove to be a good location for mounting 4G antenna to improve mobile coverage in the area once 4G starts its march towards the 98% coverage target.

[ Topic: Broadband | 7 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by herdwick 8 months ago
It's Welland *Vale* nursery, which is at least up the hill from another mast in a low spot.

Posted by prlzx 8 months ago
hmm if the claim for fixed wireless is 25 mile radius that is optimistic from a *single* central mast.

With sectors it would cover maybe 5 miles radius directly if maintaining reasonable speeds (after which the CPE antennas may become too big and/or expensive).

To go further than 10 miles needs directional dishes or panels at *both* ends so this would likely be for links to relay masts (either the higher GHz bands or optical links) rather than serving customers directly.

Posted by prlzx 8 months ago
So from a marketing perspective it may have sounded better to talk about a 100-200 square mile area while keeping the numbers realistic.

Nonetheless does sound like a good idea to combine with 4G too.

Posted by andrew ( staff member) 8 months ago
@herdwick No idea how that happened, blames spell checker.

@prlzx Next step is to find out what services get deployed.

Posted by pcoventry76 8 months ago
WHY is it people bitch about phone masts but don't mind these? Would people bitch if someone wanted to put up a 4G mast? as they are basically the same as wireless masts in regards to what it will do for people.

Human race amazes me.

Posted by prlzx 8 months ago
@pcoventry76 seems to be an odd mix of asthetics, perceptions and misconceptions - attitudes also shift with passing years.

The TV and Radio masts are huge, orders of magnitude more powerful especially for analog, but on the other hand less masts nationally and can be more remote from housing estates. Not old enough to know if there was any fuss made about those.

Concerns expressed don't seem to be proportional frequency or power levels so more a fear of an invisible unknown,

Posted by herdwick 8 months ago
"WHY is it people bitch about phone masts but don't mind these? " well it only takes one tinfoil hat nutter, but fortunately this is surrounded by fields not houses or a school.