'Broadband Hero' gets his fat pipe

[Koolvin]

They said it could never happen. They said it was a fat pipe dream. Only Trevor Sherman has today brought broadband connectivity to the area of West Haddon and Winwick in Northamptonshire.


West Haddon and Winwick fall within the 10 per cent of the country which BT has said will never be ADSL-enabled but 'Broadband Hero' Sherman and a number of like-minded souls refused to take 'no' for an answer and set about finding a way to bring broadband to their area, as silicon.com first reported in October 2002.



And amazingly the service which West Haddon and Winwick is launching today will offer a service in some ways more compelling than that users would get from BT or other ISPs.


For just £27 per month users will receive broadband with speeds as high at 2Mbps downstream - 40 times faster than dial-up and four times faster than conventional ADSL.


West Haddon and Winwick Community Broadband Ltd is taking subscriptions from users in the area from today and is offering the service by using satellite technology from Aramiska and 802.11b connectivity from Hotwireless.


Speaking to silicon.com ahead of the official launch, Sherman said: "In some ways this feels like the end of the whole process but in truth this is just the beginning. Now this is a community project and the aim is to get as wide a group of people as possible involved.


"Hopefully now what we will see is our project acting as a catalyst for others to launch similar schemes. I have already been contacted by people from all over the country asking me how I've done it and what they can do to bring broadband to their areas. I think what we have shown here in West Haddon and Winwick is that we can all do this."


Added Sherman:."I was told we were too remote and too small but it's happened."


Attending the event to launch the service was local MP Tim Boswell who echoed Sherman's hopes that this launch will prove a catalyst for other communities to follow suit.

Source: Silicon.com

 

[Sp!ke]

Great idea, gives a fingers up to BT and the like!

The only problem with all satellite based Broadband is latency.....often over 1500ms pings. This is fine for FTP but web browsing is slow and more importantly VPN access is *slower* than over dial-up.

So if you want to connect to work from home over VPN thenn forget Satellite.

 

[jack-n-gill]

Sattelite Braodband

We use sattelite technology here at work to connect to the net. However, the speed of upload/download is dependent on the number online at any one time. Sometimes it's good other times it's poor to diabolical. Still, being in a rural location, I can look out of the window and watch the river run by while I'm waiting. Ho Hum.

 

[Maff]

My company (PoundHost) has been providing wireless broadband to a nearby village for some time now. We have 135 residents with speeds between 2Mbit and 4Mbit internet each!!

www.dorneynet.co.uk

We may start rolling this out to other non-ADSL villages soon, dorneynet has been our testbed if you like!

All because BT didn't get their act together...

 

[Sp!ke]

Maff

A colleague of mine is looking into the feasibility of doing this in his village somewhere in deepest darkest Oxfordshire.

Would it be possible for him to pick your brains on the subject. Perhaps over a pint or two? He is our Unix man so he's very technical - but just not in this particular area.

Last time he and I were looking at this, we were put off by exhorbitant leased line prices and we figured we'd need at least 200 subscribers just to break even.

You've certainly got my attention anyway. What do you recon - any chance?

 

[Maff]

Not a problem, I think you have my contact details. I'm a bit busy for the next few weeks, but after that will be fine. There are a few *nix solutions out there too, we are using one of them now.

We have a non-line-of-sight wireless link to our DC, thus avoiding leased line costs, but it can be done. (our NLOS wireless link will go upto 25 miles! )