UPDATE B4RN Expand 1Gbps FTTH Broadband to Rural Suffolk and Norfolk

The plucky rural ISP B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North), which has been deploying their 1Gbps community built and funded fibre optic (FTTP/H) broadband network to remote homes in Lancashire, Cumbria and Yorkshire, has now connected 3270 properties and is expanding into Suffolk and Norfolk.

As a quick reminder, B4RN’s ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Home (“full fibre“) network has been constructed with the help of tireless volunteers from local communities across their patch, which is often done in exchange for shares instead of cash. After starting small they’re now seeing rapid growth and currently aim to connect 150 properties per month (they hit 162 in June and thus beat the target). All profits go back into the community and also help to build/manage their network.

B4RNs Coverage Map (Approximate Area of Work)

Today B4RN is home to 21 staff and they still need to fill another 3 vacancies. The provider has also built their own Civil Engineering Team and recently appointed a finance director, Andrew Brocklehurst. B4RN’s outgoing CEO, Barry Ford, told ISPreview.co.uk: “We expect to achieve around £1.5M of revenue from services in the current financial year. Loans and shares from the community have reached about £6.5M.”

Suffice to say that the provider has done an amazing job and along the way they’ve proven plenty of critics wrong. ISPreview.co.uk has now learnt that B4RN have setup a new East Anglia group within the same company, which is to focus on extending their network to serve a number of rural parishes in Suffolk and Norfolk (England).

In order to do that the operator has leased some Dark Fibre from Zayo – running from Telehouse North out to Lowestoft – and will be lighting the fibre with 40 channel Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (DWDM) in the same way as their Manchester to Edinburgh route. The official go live date is being tentatively set for late August 2017. Related peering with LONAP is also on their imminent radar.

Coverage details are expected to be announced shortly and B4RN anticipates the future possibility of being able to expand into several more areas, although it’s too early to confirm those. This is an important development because the new coverage is not contiguous with their existing footprint in the North West of England.

Finally, regular readers will also know that the Lancashire Council and Openreach (BT) have established somewhat of a history when it comes to overbuilding parts of B4RN’s network via the use of state aid (public funding), which many view as unfair and a waste of tax payers money (examples here and here). However these days the tables have turned and now it’s B4RN’s time to overbuild the big boys, albeit with their own money.

Barry Ford, CEO of B4RN, said:

“Areas like Hornby have now had a full B4RN build out despite having an exchange and FTTC [Openreach] cabinet. Work is underway in Halton and also Caton, both exchange areas. Also a number of areas got shiny new FTTC cabinets and since then we have moved in.

We have now filled in all the holes and our footprint is getting close to 100% without holes. Still a lot of work to do but the direction of travel is clear. Where BT do an overbuild we never lose a customer, where we overbuild them we achieve at least a 50% takeup.”

As in other areas, the provider benefits from a strong history of direct community funding and engagement. Locals often assist in building the network and thus feel incentivised to take B4RN’s service, which has helped to produce take-up figures that will be the envy of their rivals.

Customers pay just £30 per month for a 1000Mbps (symmetrical) unlimited service and there’s also a one-off connection fee of £150, which is absurdly cheap when you consider that it’s a Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH/P) style network. Of course none of this would be possible without all those excellent volunteers. JFDI.

UPDATE 5th July 2017

As expected B4RN has today officially announced their Broadband for Rural Norfolk Ltd (B4RNorfolk) division (B4RN East Anglia if you prefer), which actually started life as an independent group before becoming part of the wider company. The other thing to note is that the announcement appears to confirm that some parishes in Essex may also benefit, so it’s not just Norfolk and Suffolk being targeted.

Michael Davey, B4RN East Anglia’s Regional Director, said:

“B4RNorfolk was created entirely from the needs of the community, from people coming together and saying enough is enough, we’ve got to do something about rural broadband. B4RNorfolk was what the community set up to deliver it.

The key for rural broadband is not connecting fast fibre to the ageing copper and aluminium cables (known as Fibre-To-The-Cabinet, or FTTC) as this dramatically slows the speed and does nothing to prevent the constant breaks caused by the ancient infrastructure.

The answer is to bring a fast, reliable fibre connection to each property (known as Fibre-To-The-Home, or FTTH), thus putting our rural communities at the cutting edge of digital communications technology.”

The official announcement doesn’t add much to our original report above but we do learn that the first homes could be reached by the end of 2017 and those are likely to be among the following list of initial candidate locations.

As usual we wouldn’t be surprised if Openreach (BT) sees some of these and begins another one of their overbuilding efforts in areas that haven’t previously been planned for an upgrade, which is certainly one way to speed-up the roll-out of faster connectivity.

COMMUNITIES ROUTE PLANNING B4RNORFOLK

* Billingford
* Kirby Cane (volunteers needed to help route plan; further community champions needed)

COMMUNITIES EXPRESSING AN INTEREST IN B4RNORFOLK

Following interest from communities expressing an interest in joining B4RNorfolk, we are now inviting the following communities to put together a small management team and to register an interest:

* Kirby Bedon, Whitlingham and Whitlingham Hall
* Bramerton
* Rockland St Mary
* Claxton
* Carleton St Peter
* Langley with Hardley
* Stubbs Green area and rural fringe of Loddon parish
* Gelderston
* Gillingham (volunteers needed to help route plan; further community champions needed)
* Ellingham (volunteers needed to help route plan; further community champions needed)
* Broome
* Stockton
* Hales
* Hellington
* Surlingham
* Horringer
* Tivetshall St. Margaret, Tivetshall St. Mary, Shimpling, Upper Street & Thelveton
* Burston, Rushall, Brockdish, Thorpe Abbots
* Rocklands, Attleborough, Old Buckenham, Ash Rode, Tibenham & Gissing
* Thurton