Remote Balquhidder Community Preps Own 1Gbps FTTH Broadband

The remote rural community of Balquhidder in the Stirling council area of Scotland has setup its own Community Interest Company (CIC) and is poised to start the roll-out of an ultrafast 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which could benefit up to 170 local properties.

The idea for the new community network only came together recently after it became clear that the main £410m Digital Scotland project, which is predominantly helping BT to roll-out their “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network to 95% of the country by the end of 2017/18, confirmed that Balquhidder would not benefit from its deployment.

Unfortunately the Balquhidder area is currently only able to obtain a basic copper ADSL broadband service over Openreach (BT’s) network, which is due to its remote location, mountainous terrain and the fact that most services are delivered over old Exchange Only Lines (EOL) that can be very expensive to upgrade.

“Previous initiatives to improve local broadband have been frustrated by both the lack of a coherent approach from the Scottish Government and by a historical lack of co-operation from BT, including a failure to release information required to inform community-driven initiatives,” says the Balquhidder Broadband website.

Instead the community, which is being supported by investment from local residents / businesses and funding from the Community Broadband Scotland (CBS) initiative, has setup its own CIC and decided to solve the problem itself by eventually bringing a 1Gbps fibre optic connection to every property. This is to be supported by a little known ISP called Bogons, which owns a rather unique local data centre that sits inside of an old nuclear bunker near Comrie.

(Image from the UKNOF Slides)

According to a 2015 tender that we uncovered for the project (here), the original plan proposed a mix of FTTP, FTTC and possibly also Wireless connectivity. At a minimum the network was required to deliver speeds of 40Mbps (10Mbps upload) and a high desirability for a 100-300Mbps service was expressed, with the local target for take-up being 70 connected premises. Consumers would also be expected to pay a typical monthly rental of around £35 per month and a one-off installation fee of £125.

Similarly it was initially expected that the public grant from CBS would be awarded under de minimus and therefore the project cost should be under £150k. The CBS funding would cover the capital expenditure, setup for their external connection and at least the bulk of their backbone costs.

However there have been a few complications, not least with the earlier than planned expiry of the Government’s Broadband Connection Voucher scheme (£3,000 per business), which would have helped to cover the cost of connecting local firms. This means that more funding will need to be found because there are around 110 businesses in Balquhidder (mostly related to tourism), as well as up to 250 residents.

The Project’s Website said:

“One option is to make an application to CBS that’s above the State Aid threshold of €200,000, but that’s very much a last resort as it would put (at minimum) a year onto our rollout due to the insane bureaucracy involved to satisfy the EU that we’re not distorting markets with state aid!”

ISPreview.co.uk understands that the project has now lined up other potential (and apparently willing) sources of public funding, although this does put them over the limit for aggregate state aid, which means that they’d have to go through yet another procurement process. However this is also now being affected, much like so many other Broadband Delivery UK based projects, by the UK Government’s slow progress towards securing a new EU State Aid agreement (the previous one expired during mid-2015).

The good news is that we are anticipating a new agreement to surface around late May or June 2016 and that should then kick off a lot of projects around the UK, including Balquhidder’s, that have been waiting very patiently for public funding to be released.

However the hold-up may yet cause further delays for Balquhidder’s project as the area has a very narrow window where the weather is safe enough to do the work and the longer they have to wait, the smaller that window becomes, which could push everything back.

In the meantime the project hopes to dig some test trenches in the “very near future“, which they will use to test the viability of a new micro-trenching technology and to better define their roll-out approach. Best of luck to them.