B4RN Spinoff B4YS Nears 1Gbps Rural FTTH Broadband Funding Goal

The community built and funded B4RN 4 Yealand, Silverdale & Storth (B4YS) project, which as the name suggests is a spin-off from B4RN’s scheme in Lancashire (England) that aims to roll-out a “hyperfast” 1000Mbps fibre optic based Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network to the remote rural villages of Yealand, Silverdale and Storth, is close to hitting its first funding goal.

At present the best that locals in the aforementioned villages can hope for is usually less than a handful of Megabits per second, while the new network will be able to push that all the way up to 1000Mbps. As with B4RN’s primary project, B4YS will be built by the community and funded through local investment (i.e. no government grants).

The good news is that B4YS are extremely close to hitting their first funding target of around £100,000 to cover the cost of Stage One, which involves building a fibre optic link between all of the three village halls. Overall they’ve already managed to secure 77% of the total funding, which breaks down as follows.

Stage One Funding Progress

• Yealands – target: £25,000 – current level: 55% raised
• Silverdale – target: £38,000 – current level: 68% raised
• Storth – target: £38,000 – current level: 100% raised

The stage one funds will primarily be used to buy materials and equipment for the network, which locals and B4RN will then help to build. But constructing the core link is only the first stage and Stage Two will involve bringing that service to individual homes and businesses, which is currently predicted to cost roughly the same as stage one (total of around £200k).

In theory, assuming all goes according to plan, locals could be connecting to the new service from sometime in 2015. Interestingly BT and the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) scheme intends to roll-out a slower but still quite capable FTTC service in some of the same area (Storth), possibly by the end of this year (assuming it’s not delayed.. again).

But B4RN has already shown in Dolphinholme that they aren’t worried about such things and, thanks to strong community engagement, they’re often able to deliver good uptake. The council could in theory choose to de-scope B4YS’s area and use the BDUK investment to expand BT’s coverage elsewhere, but LCC has tended to shun non-BT alternatives (even those that don’t require access to tax payer funding) and so some altnets like B4YS are doing the work anyway.

By our count around 3,000+ people live in the three villages (Silverdale is the biggest with 1,600), which probably translates to several hundred premises (sadly the B4YS site is somewhat sparse on detail). As with B4RN, once completed the unlimited 1000Mbps service will cost each subscriber £30 per month, plus a one-off £150 connection fee.