The B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) ISP project, which has been deploying a 1Gbps community built and funded Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network to rural UK homes since 2012, appears to have hit a snag with Lancashire County Council hampering their UK rollout in both Caton and Halton.
The work that B4RN does would normally be too expensive for small rural villages but the operator overcomes this by harnessing local volunteers to help build the network (often in exchange for shares instead of cash). On top of that their model also relies on local landowners (e.g. farmers) being generous and agreeing to waive their right to payment as part of a wayleave (access) agreement, which enables the fibre to be dug through their land.
Unfortunately this approach can occasionally run into trouble, particularly when Lancashire County Council (LCC) gets involved. The council has a somewhat long history of shunning B4RN’s work in favour of their state aid supported Superfast Lancashire (SFL) project with BT (Openreach) and these days B4RN finds it easier to just get on with the job of deploying their network, while largely ignoring SFL’s plan.
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We should point out that one of the reasons why B4RN can afford to ignore SFL / BT is because their strong community engagement (i.e. getting locals to help build their own fibre) tends to result in incredibly high take-up in a very short space of time (65% was the last average we saw). Nevertheless there are times when B4RN still needs to talk with LCC and sadly this can result in problems.
One of two recent examples stems from their planned rollout to the large rural civil parish village of Caton (Caton-with-Littledale), which had been initially planned around the need to build a main fibre optic cabinet on the Caton Community Primary School property. In return the school would gain access to free Gigabit broadband and then local homes would obviously benefit, at least they would if not for LCC.
B4RN Caton Project Update (May/June 2018)
As previously published, a formal request for wayleave was submitted to Lancashire County Council; unfortunately LCC have since requested payment for the processing of this request, despite all the savings and benefits B4RN could bring to the school. The project is therefore currently on hold whilst B4RN try to resolve the issue with LCC.
If matters cannot be resolved with LCC then unfortunately we will have to revisit the design and look for alternative sites for the cabinet.
Because of these issues and the holiday season, there will be no further monthly meetings until the autumn.
Apparently LCC initially wanted £850 for the wayleave, although an intervention by the Labour MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood, Cat Smith, has now resulted in this being reduced to just £200. B4RN is of course a community benefit project and doesn’t pay for wayleaves, which means that even a comparatively small figure of £200 is still an obstacle. On the other hand the council may be wary of setting a precedent that commercial organisations might then seek to harness and conflicts with existing School ICT contracts could also be an issue.
We should add that Openreach’s (BT) superfast broadband (24Mbps+) capable FTTC (VDSL2) network is already available to much of Canton, although B4RN’s network would be an order of magnitude faster and clearly has enough community support to proceed. One downside is that this might pull customers off FTTC (reduce take-up), which would mean less funding available for future reinvestment via SFL clawback (gainshare).
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Meanwhile a similar problem is developing in the nearby and much more urban village of Halton (Halton-with-Aughton), which is one of the most densely populated areas that B4RN has had to connect and this brings with it plenty of new challenges. Luckily there are lots of fields nearby and the optical cable has already been built to the village centre (the service itself is not yet live).
The work in Halton is being supported by £60,000 that has been raised by the community but unfortunately a report in the Lancaster Guardian reveals that one “big stumbling block” remains.
Robb Thompson, Member of B4RN for Halton, said:
“The big stumbling block at the moment is getting into the school field. There’s a lot of effort taking place to get Lancashire County Council to plant a wayleave into the school field. It would save the school a lot of money to have free Wifi and it also gives them a great connection.”
In response Susie Charles, LCC Councillor for Schools, said that the county council was still “waiting for more information from B4RN about their proposal” before considering it, although B4RN appear to feel as if they’ve already provided enough of the relevant information. “We have to assess how this would affect any future requests, such as from other providers and for other sites around the county,” added Susie.
Susie is somebody that is known to have been present at several past meetings concerning the B4RN project, including when it was visited by the UK Secretary of State a few years ago (here), and so she should by now be intimately familiar with it. Meanwhile the school in question allegedly continues to be charged several thousand pounds per year by LCC for their internet connection, which B4RN will do for free.
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