Rural UK Full Fibre ISP B4RN Partners ZyXEL for School Routers
Rural focused UK ISP B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North), which is working with volunteers to help fund and build a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network in remote areas, has partnered ZYXEL to offer their AX7501 router for free to 21 schools in Lancashire, South Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales.
As part of their build strategy B4RN often tries to reduce deployment costs by asking local landowners (e.g. farmers) for help, such as by waiving their right to payment as part of a wayleave agreement. This enables the fibre to be dug through their land or for a new full fibre cabinet to be built on the same land.
In keeping with that they often also give local schools a free gigabit connection. Now a further 21 primary schools in Lancashire, Cumbria and Yorkshire look set to receive this service alongside one of ZYXEL’s new AX7501 routers, which supports the latest 4×4 dual band WiFi 6 (802.11ax) standard for a maximum wireless throughput rate of up to 6Gbps (local network connectivity).
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Barry Forde, CEO of B4RN, said:
“Prior to being connected with B4RN’s network, these rural schools did not have access to the same level of wireless connectivity as their urban counterparts.
Nobody knows what the future of education will hold, but with this router, we can now increase each schools’ broadband service from 1 Gigabit per second to 10 and help them compete with some of the best-connected educational institutions.”
End.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I think one interesting point has been missed here. B4RN is now offering a full 10Gbs/10Gbs service to everyone who wants it at a price of £150/month (inc VAT). The primary schools get that for nothing per month and nothing for setup charges thanks to Zyxel support funding the routers and SFP+ optics to go into our switches. What anyone will do with 10Gbs is a good question but I have great faith in the ingenuity of people and am sure they will come up with some novel applications. Its ironic that the small rural primary schools, that are generally considered uneconomic to connect, now have the same sort of bandwidth that large Universities have.
Well played that man.
Ah yes I missed that, probably because the announcement said “10GB FTTP broadband” rather than 10Gbps and I automatically converted that to a 10GB data allowance in my head 🙂 . Had been busy updating mobile data plans that day. It would be good if B4RN could send us these press releases directly too.
Hear, hear. I’ve been saying the same thing.
Remarkable partnership here
Gotta love these Altnets.