100Mbps Wireless Broadband Arrives in Stone – Gloucestershire Village

Residents of Stone in Gloucestershire (England), which is a rural village and home to over 700 people, can now gain access to superfast broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps after Oxford ISP Rural Broadband teamed-up with Wireless Excellence to install a new wireless network.

Apparently the project has already won the backing of both the South Gloucestershire Council and the Diocese of Gloucester, with the ISP being allowed to install their new receiver and wireless distribution system on top of the local ‘All Saints Church‘ that overlooks most of the village. The network is then fuelled with capacity by harnessing the local School’s fibre optic cable (this is supplied by Virgin Media’s business division).

The wireless hardware being used is said to be the same as deployed with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and it can theoretically deliver symmetrical broadband speeds of up to 500Mbps, although their residential packages currently only offer a top tier of 100Mbps.

Simon Craker, Chairman of Rural Broadband, said (here):

“This is a community project to offer the village an ultra-fast, economical and reliable Internet service. The speeds are unmatched by the traditional suppliers – up to five times faster than BT at 500mb – and will roll out in the village in the next few months.

Chris Chopping, warden at All Saints Church, and David Joyce, head of governors at Stone’s primary school have been heavily involved in the project.”

Customers of the new service, which could also be expanded to cover other villages in the county, must pay from £25 per month for an unlimited 10Mbps (symmetric) service and this rises to £43 for the top 100Mbps option. A one-off connection fee of £29.99 is also payable and additional installation charges may apply (around £150).

However it’s worth pointing out that part of the village can already access Openreach’s (BT) Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) based broadband service, with some premises being able to receive “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) speeds. Mind you this doesn’t appear to be true for everybody and the new service may well help to fill in some of the gaps.

There are also a couple of other issues that should be mentioned. Firstly, Rural Broadband’s website appears to lack a legally required postal address (at least we couldn’t find one when checking). On top of that they may also have somewhat of a name and logo conflict with another ISP of the same name that has been around for a lot longer (here). At least the address issue should be an easy fix.