B4RN is go!! :)))

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We all knew today would come, it was just when, but now it really is ALL go! Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN or Barn to its followers) has passed the required number of registrations to proceed with building a world class, gigabit, ubiquitous, community owned and run, community benefit FTTH network. And there's more....

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



There is an invite-only Launch event for the company and share offer on 15th December at 2pm at The Storey, Lancaster. This is an opportunity for potential investors and those that B4RN will be connecting to come together to meet the Management Committee, hear much more about the project, see the maps, and more. (Cyberdoyle has promised cake too!) Full details of the share offer will be given and for many it will be a chance to learn what they can do to help with the next phase. This is a hands-on community project and our network of supporters extends around the globe already. (If you would like to attend the Launch event, please let infoatb4rndotorgdotuk know ASAP as space is limited to 150 people).

Unless you have been living off-planet, you will know by now what B4RN intends to do. How we are going about doing it is undoubtedly unique, but we believe it will prove to be (and have designed the project to be) eminently replicable elsewhere. Our main aim is to connect what is (if there was a proper definition) the Final Ten Percent and disprove all these claims of rural and remote FTTH non-viability. The first 8 parishes are without a doubt in deeply rural areas. I can highlight just how rural by saying that when we were looking at which bank we should approach for the company account and/or for a loan deal for anyone looking to borrow the money at a special rate to buy shares, we realised that there wasn't actually a branch of ANY bank in the project area! (Which highlights the importance of being able to access internet banking...)

The next phase requires an incredible amount of commitment from a growing number of people so this blog may become less rant-ridden over the coming months as I am as determined as any other member of the current Management Team and the Lune Valley residents to make this succeed by throwing everything we have at it from our own skills and expertise. And it is quite a team, which you probably couldn't have headhunted if you had tried, but which I suspect reflects the enormous talent you can find in rural areas if you just look.

I am copying and pasting the text of the press release below for anyone who wishes to run with it for their own blog, local paper, news site, council etc to show just what can be done in rural areas, whatever the hype would have you believe. We continue to be as open as possible with the info we are putting out there (unlike others) so let us know if we have overlooked anything that you need to know.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 1st December 2011


Residents in North Lancashire launch Fibre Optic Broadband Company

An exciting community initiative, initially across eight parishes of rural Lancashire, to deliver a world class hyperfast fibre optic broadband network is being launched at The Storey in Lancaster on 15th December at 2pm.

Broadband has become essential for every sector of the community and increasingly important for our daily lives. Government and the large telecom companies plan to upgrade broadband to ‘superfast’ but not in many rural areas, where limited internet and mobile coverage affects businesses, homes and farms. The difficulty is reaching economic viability when private companies’ costs are so high and subscriber numbers are low.

Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN) plans to lower the costs, both in the building of the broadband network and to the end user, by using local contractors and the community. “Farmers and local people have the skillset we need for this project. They know the land and people, and have been offering to work for shares, which means the digging for the core network can start early in 2012. We expect this to be completed in approximately 3 months, weather permitting, and then we will begin to connect the first users,” stated Professor Forde. Shares will be available from 15th December - further information and application forms will be available on the B4RN.org.uk website on that date.

B4RN’s plans are for a hyperfast broadband network fit for purpose far into this century.
A 1 gigabit (1000Mbps) connection will ensure that any interaction with the Internet will be quick and easy. Television, films, cheap phone and video calls over the Internet, the ability to extend local mobile phone networks to cover black-spots, local security, telehealth and medicine applications - all will become possible. B4RN will be initially be providing the broadband connection and VoIP telephony, with further services to follow as the network rolls out over the coming years.

Barry Forde, B4RN Chief Executive, will explain the project and launch the share offer in the company to raise the necessary capital required over the next few months. Representatives from the first phase communities of Melling, Arkholme, Quernmore, Abbeystead, Wray, Tatham, Roeburndale, Wennington and Caton with Littledale will be at the event as well as local dignitaries and celebrities.

B4RN is a community benefit company, owned by its shareholders. Income made will be re-invested in the service and spent within the communities the company serves. The shares are being made available under the EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) that offers 30% tax relief, with a minimum investment of £100 and maximum of £20,000.

B4RN hopes to attract the support of local, national and international investors, whilst remaining a truly community-run business, bringing fast, future-proof, sustainable Internet access to the rural uplands, for this generation and those to come, leaving a lasting legacy for the area.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. B4RN has been more than three years in the planning and development stage. The B4RN project will bring a state of the art, fibre optic broadband connection to the rural communities long before most of the urban areas. Rural Lancashire plans to be a world leader in “hyperfast”.

2. Professor Barry Forde (B4RN Chief Executive) is a networking expert with many years experience of designing, building and operating high performance networks. He was responsible for the CLEO network which provides connectivity to over 1000 schools and public sector sites across Lancashire and Cumbria. Bios are available for Professor Forde and the Management team http://tinyurl.com/6tpdkmt

3. The full business plan is available on the website, along with details of the pricing and payment structure for local residents and businesses. http://tinyurl.com/895uvdx This includes bonuses of free install and connection for 12 months with a £1500 investment, three further free months for early bird investors, and payment in shares for involvement in the deployment of the project.

4. A target of 662 registrations of interest were required for a green light and this was passed in just three months. The project moves one step closer to implementation with the launch of the Share Issue. “The phased network will be built by the community over three years for the seven phases. Now we have passed our target of over 700 registrations of interest in investment and taking a service at £30/month for 1Gbps, we can proceed to raise the capital required for Phase 1,” said Barry Forde.

5. B4RN will initially provide internet and telephony with further services in the future. Each home will have a battery backup so telephony over the fibre means landline connections are no longer required.

6. Christine Conder, a farmer’s wife and rural broadband pioneer, who successfully dug and installed the first rural fibre cable to her farm in Wray in 2009, knows it can be done and sums up the enthusiasm and ethos of B4RN, “If we don’t do it ourselves then it will never get done, so B4RN is the answer, let’s all JFDI.”

7. Photos (to be accredited to B4RN) are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/b4ruralnorth

Contact details:

Professor Barry Forde, Barry@B4RN.org.uk
Christine Conder, Chris@B4RN.org.uk
Lindsey Annison, Lindsey@B4RN.org.uk

Telephone: 01524 221588 or mobile: 07952 503253 / 07967 670759
Twitter: @dig2agig
Website: http://www.B4RN.org.uk
JFDI (Just Farmers Doing IT)







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Why we must settle for nothing less than FTTH....

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Read more! I am struggling a tad with a story yesterday that implies that "superfast broadband" is 'up to 6Mbps' from now on. Have we lost it??? Other countries are doing 1000Mbps (yes, count the zeros) and we think 6Mbps will make us a leading broadband nation?
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Meanwhile, thanks to Twitter, I finally have permission to reproduce a quite extraordinary post from across the Atlantic (I presume) from @lamapper on the Broadband Cumbria site

If you are not following Barry Forde (my first ever keynote speaker, in Leyburn, possibly before many people here had even heard the term "broadband" and long before I knew many of those who are now broadband centre stage!), then do so. Now!

Do not support a BT Infinity campaign or let your County Council spend your/our money until you know the options. Barry is outlining the choices and the world is responding..........

@lamapper says:
Great article, with great explanation that . . .

“they (BT)refuse to supply dark fibre to third parties”

. . . that is the problem in a nut shell in every country in the world today.

Japan solved this by deregulating NTT, thus in 2000 Japanese consumers received 100Mb/100Mb for $55 per month…Thanks to the de-regulated Fiber by 2006, they could swap out their Fiber Modems and could get 1 Gbps/1Gbps for $52 per month. The price going down as more and more subscribers come on board in spite of the exponential increase in a customer’s bandwidth is a very STRONG indication that the Japanese economic market for Internet access is working.

Many of us understand that you can multiplex a single fiber cable and increase the bandwidth from 1X to 1024X, this has been true since the early 2000s. And when a company runs Fiber, they do not just run a single strand…that would be a waste of time and money…they just leave the extra Fibre dark.

Here in the USA, the current non Fiber providers – read Cable, DSL, Telco… (and the non synchronous Fiber providers like Verizon who only offers 50Mb/5Mb) are quick to deny the reality that consumers need high levels of bandwidth and that ONLY Fiber To The Home (FTTH) will do the job over the long haul.

Any solution that does not put Fiber in the home of the consumer is at best a waste of time and money, and at worst a Ponzi scheme perpetuating the bandwidth scarcity myth that most providers rely on for their failed tiered pricing plans.

Consumers in the USA are no longer waiting for the telco – cable – wireline – wireless provider oligopoly to provide Fiber any longer. Consumers are beginning to wake up and have noted that their (providers) actions since 1990 have shown their true colors. That they have no intention of providing Fiber To The Home unless forced to do so. This is in spite of receiving in excess of $900 Billion SPECIFICALLY for Fiber from American Tax payers (money + taxes + fees) since the 1990s. They have had three decades, over 30 years to provide Americans with Fiber. They have failed. In fact it is reported they spend in excess of $1.5 Million per WEEK lobbing elected politicians to avoid fulfilling their 1990 era promise of Fiber…for which they were amply paid I might add.

Heck Chattanooga finished their FTTH build-(approx 2,500 businesses and over 20,000 residences) out 7 years ahead of schedule with an infusion of cash of barely over $100,000. EPB finished in 3 years instead of the planned 10 years. As of December 2010 they are finished with the initial Fiber build out and are already looking at expanding their offering thanks to the huge demand for the service by their citizens. It should be noticed that the incumbent provider had been fighting against EPB and Chattanooga since the 1990s to prevent this reality. Thankfully they failed.

In spite of these un American and anti-competitive providers a few American communities have provided FTTH to their citizens. In every case they have been fought tooth and nail by the incumbent provider whether telco or cable. In spite of the up hill battle, almost 30 communities have SYNCHRONOUS FTTH Internet in the USA. When Google announces their 5 Go Big With a Gig communities there will barely be over 30 communities in the USA that are providing true and honest Internet service to consumers, citizens and residents.

This map shows the locations of SYNCHRONOUS FTTH US communities/cities: http://sn.im/1axal4

It is interesting to note that Utopia in Utah provides FTTH via User Owned Fiber. Home owners pay $1,500.00 and their community provides another $1,500.00 via bonds for this purpose. The home-owner’s real estate increases in value thanks to this User Owned Fiber.

Most of my friends are planning to move to one of the 30 or so communities on the map in order to secure FTTH Internet for themselves and their posterity. We have waited 30 years, we will NOT wait another 5 years. Thankfully we do not have too.

Over time as more and more home buyers insist on FTTH as their number 1 consideration when purchasing a new/used home, communities will have no choice but to either force their providers to provide Fiber or kick them out of their communities. Those communities with FTTH offerings are recovering faster economically than others as businesses too are relocating bringing jobs with them. Makes these communities a better long term investment in all areas, especially Real Estate.

What BT and their ilk should worry about more is the loss of TRUST that their inaction, bad business practices and customer no service methods have caused among their consumer base. After multiple decades of abusing their customers TRUST, why would you even want to do business with them, ever. My friends and I do NOT and we are instilling this legacy in our children as well. The great things about our kids, they are more Internet savvy than many of their parents, they get it.

Let em choke on their non FTTH, non synchronous, non net neutral inferior Internet offerings.

A couple of the FTTH communities thanks to synchronous bandwidth are allowing their customers to run their own personal cloud, file and email servers from their homes….long overdue and about time!

Even 10Mb/10Mb at between $25 to $50 per month is much, much better than a promise of “up to” anything, throttled back to less than 100Kbps/30Kbps, the Cable provider reality in the USA today.

In Japan, NTT, thanks to owning the Fiber once again found themselves in the dominant position in spite of De-regulation, I suppose consumers in both England and the USA are going to have to get a little bit more upset at the incumbent provider’s customer-no-service and insist on FTTH or they will never get it! Our combined telco/cable Internet history shows this truth to be self evident.

Here in America, we are relocating and moving for FTTH, problem solved.

Funny how synchronous Fibre bandwidth solves the net neutrality issues as well, once the bandwidth scarcity myth is put to death, there is no longer as large an incentive to censor, restrict and limit, why waste time and money on software and/or hardware if its simply not needed?

The Future can be BRIGHT, but only with FTTH, nothing less!
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Radio Lentil interviews - as promised (Intro)

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Read more! Many apologies for the length of time it has taken to start getting these fab interviews from the Rory's Reivers broadband conference in Penrith, Cumbria, out on Radio Lentil. If I said we had technical issues, it wouldn't cover the half of it!

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

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A huge thanks has to go to Mark Holdstock for taking over the green room, giving up attending the majority of the conference, interviewing everyone ushered in, having to wolf down his lunch, then editing the interviews and ensuring they were all delivered before the conference ended. The delay in getting them online - well, blame it on the copper, rural business requirements, etc! Me, if you wish ;o)

Our first interview will be Barry Forde.

Back in about 2002/3, Barry was the keynote speaker at my first broadband conference in Leyburn, Wensleydale - possibly the first rural broadband conference held, though my modesty prohibits me from making sure people remember this too often!

I asked Barry to speak as keynote because it was so apparent from our talks that here was a man with a vision that was ACHIEVABLE, real and sustainable. 8 years later, Barry's visions continue to be deliverable and forward thinking, despite the fact that all of those involved back then would far prefer that we had moved on much more than we have.

Project Access was, as I understand it, originally Barry's plan to deliver future-proofed broadband to all of this area. In essence, it was remarkably similar to the Digital Village Pump idea - fat pipes to as many communities as possible. Ergo, DVP could have come into being almost 10 years ago, helping Cumbria and Lancs lead the way across the EU to FTTH and FiWi. However....

Project Access's failure has led to the need to revisit Barry's original idea to ensure that businesses in Cumbria are finally connected to an infrastructure which actually delivers what is required. Whilst excuses may be given for the take up in Cumbria having pushed the infrastructure to its limits, everyone involved knew that PA in its final iteration was never going to do the job initially proposed.

What is now presented as the "award winning" (cough, splutter) Project Access was a dumbed down version of Barry's original, far-sighted solution; at a cost of between £19.2M and £26M, depending on who you speak to. (More about Project Access another day).

Meanwhile, whilst Project Access fought its way through the machinations of RDAs, EU, State Aid etc, Barry and CLEO (Cumbria and Lancashire Education Online) pressed on to build a school's network out of Lancaster Uni that is probably second to none in the UK. Bizarrely, it gets little publicity for what it is, nor what it has achieved.

As a mum with kids who have gone to four schools in Cumbria, the fact that even our primary schools had 2Mbps before many urban schools had fought their way through Learning Stream contracts is a matter of pride. I still have an early CLEO network map on my noticeboard, showing the diligence that was applied to connect even the most remote and far-flung schools to the Internet.

Barry ought to be in retirement, but there are many of us who are not willing to let him go just yet. His knowledge of local infrastructure, and how to best use it, makes him invaluable; his vision is more than just long-sighted. If anyone knows how to make Cumbria and similar rural areas succeed in the knowledge economy, it is Barry.

Nothing phazes him - railways, motorways, difficult to reach communities, mobile operators, BT, regulations, unnecessarily locked down education networks, public speaking, or dealing with obstreperous, impatient females within his 'constituency'!










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