Great Asby to Get FTTP Broadband as Community Network Preps Closure

After a decade of campaigning it’s finally been confirmed that residents of Great Asby, which is a beautiful little rural village in Cumbria (North West England), will soon be able to get online with broadband speeds of up to 330Mbps thanks to BT’s forthcoming FTTP network rollout. Sadly that also means the demise of the local community fixed wireless network.

The Great Asby Broadband (GAB) service, which serves about 80 premises, was first established in 2005 because locals were unable to receive even a basic broadband service by either cable or ADSL over BT’s copper wire network. Instead locals setup their own fixed wireless network and this officially became incorporated as a Community Interest Company in 2007.

The network, which started off by offering speeds of up to 10Mbps, and with some financial support from the public purse, has continued to work well and is today able to deliver symmetrical speeds of up to 18Mbps (although at peak times this can still slow to 5Mbps or less). But the owners admit that their network “was only ever intended as a stopgap until commercial superfast broadband became readily available” and now that day appears to have come.

A local update confirms that the regional Connecting Cumbria programme, which is supported by BT and the Government’s national Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) project, will soon begin deploying a pure fibre optic network into the village using Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology via existing underground cable ducts and local telegraph poles.

The reach of the network into Great Asby is expected to be limited by the available funding, although it’s hoped that most premises will benefit. Precise coverage plans are expected to be confirmed by BT during early 2015 and implementation of the new network should then be completed by Summer 2015. So what will become of Great Asby Broadband?

Great Asby Broadband – Dec 2014 Update

Given that the majority of Great Asby will be covered by the new network, we expect many of our subscribers to take up a new commercial service. In consequence, GAB in its present form will reasonably quickly cease to be financially viable. Indeed, we have already confirmed to Connecting Cumbria that our network was only ever intended as a stopgap until commercial superfast broadband became readily available in Great Asby, and that, thereafter, our service would be systematically wound down.

The reason for this is not only that a community service run by volunteers cannot be expected to operate indefinitely (and indeed the Directors have no intention of attempting this); but also that Connecting Cumbria is only allowed to apply state funding in areas where the open market is unable or not prepared to provide a service.

We have always recognised that not all our subscribers will be served by the new superfast network because of their relatively remote locations and that those ‘outliers’ will have an interest in maintaining their access to the internet by some means.

It’s understood that GAB is considering two operators for “outliers“, one of which involves finding a solution with BT and the other would be a smaller version of their existing fixed wireless network. In both cases BT’s new fibre optic link to the village will help to reduce the backhaul capacity costs, although wayleaves and network management issues may become a problem. All of this is to be discussed early next year.