B4YS Start Rural FTTH Broadband Rollout for Yealand, Silverdale and Storth

Good news. The B4RN 4 Yealand, Silverdale & Storth (B4YS) project has broken out a mole-ploughing monster and officially dug its first soil as part of their community-funded and built deployment of a new 1000Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network for the three rural villages of Yealand, Silverdale and Storth in Lancashire (England).

In case it wasn’t already incredibly obvious from the name, B4YS is actually a spin-off from B4RN’s nearly identical scheme in the same county and in fact the B4RN team are also the ones managing most of the build; alongside members of the local community.

Regular readers might recall that the project successfully achieved its Stage One funding target, without any recourse to state aid, of £101,000 in September 2014 (here). This is needed to cover the cost of constructing their core network.

Since then B4YS has been busy finalising their route plan, double checking permission from local landowners and buying the necessary materials / equipment in order to begin their deployment. Happily the first soil was finally broken yesterday (pictured), thanks in no small part to a big farmer friendly mole-plough that is digging a trench for the new cable.

B4YS Statement:

“The tricky first route deals with the M6, the canal, the West Coast main rail line and the A6…all within a 4km stretch! Congratulations to the Yealands team who’ve worked so hard to plan the route and obtain permission from the landowners.

Thank you to the landowners who have kindly supported us with free-of-charge access to their land, and thank you to our initial investors too; your cheques have gone towards buying the orange ducting and materials.”

The first homes are anticipated to be connected sometime this year, although many of those will require a second stage of funding to be achieved (roughly the same cost as stage one) and work on that already appears to be progressing quite well.

The service itself costs £30 inc. VAT per month and then £150 for the one-off connection fee, although for that you get an unlimited and 1000Mbps capable pure fibre optic package (note: the connection fee is waived for those who invest £1,500+).

It’s worth noting that BT and the local state-aid fuelled Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme also intend to deploy a slower FTTC service in some of the same area (Storth). But that’s never stopped B4RN before and B4YS are concentrating on a larger area than the BDUK scheme. Overall the three villages involved are home to around 3,000+ people.