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Tuesday 19 October 2010

Practical Get Online Week

It's all very well persuading people to get online, but it's not much good if that is a physical impossibility in their location. As ever, it is not the uber-funded who are out there JFDI!

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Once upon a time, we built a network in a matter of days - Wennet - with a SWAT team who came together to connect a notspot using funds destined to be spent on pointless and probably unread case studies. The story of that is in the book JFDI Community Broadband Wennington. (Note, please do not order from Amazon. You will never receive a copy).

However, once you get a few people online on a decent connection (that puts the incumbent to shame), others start to hassle to be connected too!

So, progress has continued. Connecting others in the vicinity, both with fibre and wireless.

Once again, there is another video of the practical work being done to bring broadband to deeply rural areas of the UK - more FiWi Pie from Lancashire.



And it's nice to add that Rory's Reivers contributed their travel money from the #rbc10 conference to buy these nanos. Far better use of the money than giving it to over-paid suits on expense accounts. So, one month to the day since the conference and two new links have been put in as an interim measure until fibre can be laid to bridge that gap. However, fibre backhaul may be arriving via a different route, and then these wireless bridges will be re-used to connect up the next two communities who are waiting patiently for any sort of connection.

See? FiWi Pie, we love it!

(Oh, and UK Online Centres.... these videos are exactly what you should be using to promote Get Online week. Tweet them and share them! We have got to work together. That includes those with wellies and no dosh, AND those with posh t-shirts, badges, flags, banners, balloons etc.)


2 comments:

final third said...

Nice to know that rorysreivers are in action in so many places! Using resources wisely and well. The steel bonnets will win in the end, the North West will get their connections one way or another, all part of the great pie.

Unknown said...

Kent must be a Leader in WiMax Broadband. The County Council support it and slowly everywhere in Kent that does not havbe Bropadband gets Wireless Broadband. The speed of wireless is incredible now they arer taling about 100mb in some parts ogf Kent. Wireless seems to be the future of Broadband. Good luck Lancashire on your project. Check out www.vfast.co.uk for the Kent story.