Rural B4YS FTTH Broadband Rollout Reaches Yealand Village Hall

The B4RN 4 Yealand, Silverdale & Storth (B4YS) project, which is working with B4RN to deploy a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network for three rural Lancashire (England) villages (Yealand, Silverdale and Storth), has achieved a significant milestone by connecting Yealand Village Hall.

Last year saw the project successfully achieve its Stage One funding target, without any recourse to state aid, of £101,000 in September 2014 (here) and the roll-out itself finally got underway during early January 2015 (here).

Since then the core network deployment has made good progress and a major milestone has just been achieved after the fibre optic cable finally reached Yealand Village Hall. The hall, which will also act as a hub for the new network, has now been connected and the service made live.

Mike Macklin, Yealand B4YS Team, said:

“The Hyperfast Broadband service is now live in Yealand Village Hall.We completed the fibre blowing three weeks ago but we needed the B4RN technicians to connect us to the network. This work was completed yesterday. The hall is now connected, together with a few properties and business’s on the route from Tewitfield.

The cabinet in the hall is fully operational but the wifi router still needs an electricity connection. This will be completed next week.

The installation of the duct continues in Conyers, and is now well advanced. We are now waiting for permission for the road crossings from Lancashire County Council, which should be received shortly.

We are making progress on the wayleaves through Redmayne and hopefully, work will start on the laying of the duct shortly.”

Meanwhile Silverdale and Storth will soon become the next focus, which will require further planning for another 10 miles of route and all of the associated complications. It’s worth pointing out that some homes may not be connected until a second stage of funding has been achieved (roughly the same cost as stage one), although work on that front already appears to be progressing well.

The service itself, which comes from B4RN, 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+). As with B4RN, the B4YS project is largely a community-built and funded scheme.