Better Internet in West Bergholt?

Better Internet in West Bergholt?

A Message from Chris Stevenson – Chair of the Parish Council

Chris Stevenson 2015For some time now people in the village have been enquiring about when we will receive Superfast Broadband Services (Internet).  As residents will know we already have access to this service via County Broadband, but we have asked to be considered for entry into Essex County Council’s Superfast Broadband programme & we await response to enquiries about progress.

Most recently a resident in the village made an enquiry to BT Openreach direct, and received a quotation to supply the village; some will have seen this reproduced on the Hub & Community Facebook pages, which received tens of comments as a result.  In order to shed some light on the matter, I have said, at the recent Annual Parish Meeting, that all the possible options need an airing so that people in the village can fully appreciate the situation.  In order to help do this a resident Aaron Williams has independently undertaken some research into our options and submitted his ideas to the Parish Council. He also attended the Annual Parish Meeting and gave a synopsis of this work.

The article below and the slideshow (download file) give an introduction to some options. Aaron will make a short presentation on this matter at the next Parish Council meeting (to which all are welcome).

Chris Stevenson

What we could do about this

Aaron Williams - keen to get faster Internet
Aaron Williams – keen to get faster Internet

Local villager, Aaron Williams is keen to get better internet in West Bergholt, so keen, in fact, that he is prepared to travel to Lancaster to find out how Rural Communities in the North of England got together to build their very own high speed fibre-to-the-door internet service.  The Broadband for the Rural North project (B4RN) now has over 800km of core network in Lancashire, North Yorks & Cumbria and offers fibre speeds of up to 1,000Mbps to every property in their area.

Obviously building your own network isn’t the only option for improving Broadband in West Bergholt and Aaron has written an informative presentation for those wanting to find out more about his researches on the subject.  He will be presenting this at the next Parish Council meeting on 27th April and all are, as with any Parish Council meeting, welcome to attend.  Other options include paying BT or working with existing altnets such as County Broadband.  You can download a copy of the presentation below.

B4RN are running a ‘Show-Tell’ day on Tuesday 26th April (9:00 – 16:30), which Aaron intends attending (leaving on 25th and staying overnight in the Carnforth area), and he would be happy to travel with any fellow villagers interested in seeing B4RN in action, as they say:

B4RN Emtelle Show Tell Day 9These now legendary events are an opportunity to meet up with like minded folk, to learn and share the knowledge of rural broadband deployment. These are great events for communities who want to learn how deploy a community based world class broadband network. They are free to attend thanks to our sponsors.

The date for the ninth Show-Tell day is set for the Tuesday 26th April 2016. These events have been extremely popular and have allowed valuable information to be shared. The day includes field visits to see various aspects of the B4RN community fibre broadband deployment.

The event, as before will be jointly hosted by B4RN and Emtelle in Lancaster and the surrounding B4RN area. The day will focus on sharing experiences and demonstrating installation techniques for rural fibre to the home/broadband initiatives.
Topics to be covered include:-

  • Customer Engagement
  • Product Selection
  • Network Planning
  • Content
  • Active Equipment
  • Hands on demonstrations
  • Field trip
  • Meeting volunteers

We hope you will be able to join us for a fully interactive day! It is advised that due to the locations visited on the field trip that delegates bring suitable clothing such as a raincoat and walking boots or wellies!

If interested, please register for attendance by emailing [antibot mailto=”[email protected]”], you will then be sent further details regarding the full agenda and location.

Aaron is happy to discuss any of this further if you have an interest and he can be contacted by email [antibot mailto=”[email protected]”] or mobile, call 07910 007508; if you are interested in attending the Show-Tell day, you can also use these to contact Aaron and arrange to travel together.

Downloads

Skip to content