Airband Wireless Rural Broadband Network Goes Live in Shropshire UK

The first customer has officially gone live on Airband’s new fixed wireless “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) service in Shropshire, which forms part of last year’s new £11.2m Connecting Shropshire contract that will see the network being rolled out reach an additional 14,000+ premises by 2020.

The contract was first signed in July 2017 (here) and will take place alongside the scheme’s existing deployments of FTTC/P technology with Openreach (BT), which together are working to ensure that 98% of premises (homes and businesses) in Shropshire can access a 30Mbps+ capable broadband service by around the middle of 2020.

Funding Split of the £11.2m Contract
Airband – £1.4m
Shropshire County Council – £2.24m
Broadband Delivery UK – £5.29m
Marches LEP – £2.27m

The first transmitter on Airband’s new network in the area was officially installed in December 2017 (here) and this was intended to serve 300+ premises around parts of the Sheriffhales and Shifnal parishes, as well as other communities further east (e.g. Tong). As a result it will not come as much of a surprise to confirm that the first customer connection has now also gone live near Shifnal.

IT security manager Andrew Lee and his wife, Sulayma, who live in a tiny rural village, are the first to be installed with superfast broadband under the initial deployment phase. The couple say they’ve been awaiting faster broadband for four years.

Andrew Lee told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We live in a tiny village with just 46 houses three miles from Shifnal, close to Cosford airbase but our communications have always been poor.

When BT upgraded the exchange in Albrighton it didn’t make any difference to us, so we were really keen to get a better connection with Airband.

It’s a challenging location so installation wasn’t straightforward. I think this is because we are in a valley and it took a while to establish line-of-sight connection and also because our house is a listed building. They were very patient and thorough and to be honest I’m overjoyed with the results.

Before our Airband connection, we had download speed of 2.5 Mbps. Streaming stuff was awful – it was always buffering, and working from home was almost impossible. Now we have 30 Mbps and I am able to work from home when I need to.”

Dave Lloyd, Airband’s Project Manager, said:

“Rural Shropshire suffers with some of the poorest broadband speeds in the UK, and we are delighted to be playing a significant role in turning this situation around. This key milestone highlights the progress we’re making to help connect rural residents across the county.

The project will be going live in five phases. Phase 1 of the project is due to complete in Spring and involves 28 transmitter sites. During this period, Airband will be making Superfast broadband available to 7,000 homes. Further areas will be going live incrementally as the network is created.”

The new service requires that a small receiver is attached to individual properties, which enables them to connect to the Line-of-Sight (LOS) wireless network. Customers typically pay from £10 per month for a basic 30Mbps (2Mbps upload) service with a 10GB usage allowance, 12 month contract and £99 one-off installation fee. Meanwhile the top package costs £42 for an unlimited 30Mbps (4Mbps upload) connection.