F4RN Raise GBP84K to Bring 100Mbps Broadband to Rural Nottinghamshire

The B4RN inspired and community backed Fibre for Rural Nottinghamshire (F4RN) project, which aims to roll-out a 100Mbps broadband service to the rural Nottinghamshire (England) villages of Fiskerton and Morton (Fiskerton-cum-Morton), has managed to raise £84,250 to fuel its effort.

Unfortunately the funding achieved, while impressive for the community size, is still short of the c.£150,000 goal that F4RN originally set out to achieve a few short months ago. Never the less the share offer remains open to further commitments and a final plan is now being prepared.

F4RN’s March 2016 Update

With over £83,000 pledged to our community broadband project during the initial offer period we’ve had a brilliant response to our plans. A huge “thank you” to everyone who has supported the project with investments, commitments to subscribe and offers to help build the network once we get under way.

Although £83,000 is a fantastic achievement it falls short of the target we set in the original business plan. This means that we cannot proceed straight away unless more investment is received or we agree a revised business plan with those people who have already signed up to invest in the scheme.

However F4RN’s team said they remain “confident that we can deliver the promised ultrafast, 100Mbps symmetrical broadband service to every property in the Parish” and a meeting will be held to discuss the precise approach on 17th April 2016, at 3pm in the Arthur Radford Hall.

It’s important to reflect that F4RN’s approach appears to be based around a likely combination of both fixed wireless connectivity and pure fibre optic (FTTH/P) lines. The reason for this is due to a combination of cost and difficulty, with reaching the more built up (central) areas of the two villages being a particular challenge.

As a first step F4RN propose to build a high performance mesh radio (wireless) network so that those areas can get online quickly, but the eventual plan is to fill in the FTTH network as quickly as possible (top speeds may eventually rise to 1Gbps once this is achieved). In theory the whole network could be installed and operational within 12 months, but that remains a very tentative forecast.

It’s worth pointing out that the Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire project with BT is expected to potentially reach all or part of the area between July 2017 and 2018, but it appears as if the community have little desire to wait for what they fear could be an inferior service; assuming it does actually arrive.