Wireless UK ISP Airband Makes Progress on Herefordshire Rollout

Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) ISP Airband has issued a short update on their state aid supported Fastershire contract. The provider is rolling out a new hybrid wireless and fibre optic 100Mbps+ broadband network to cover 10 rural communities (dispersed clusters) in Herefordshire (England), which has just gone live in Tedstone Wafre.

At present Fastershire has so far helped to extend faster broadband to cover an additional 96,516 premises across both Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, with most of the work being done via FTTC and some FTTP technology from Openreach and Gigaclear. The Hereforshire side of this aims to achieve “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) coverage of 97% by the end of 2020 (here), which requires quite a jump from 88% today.

As part of that plan Airband last year scooped up a smaller stage 4 contract (here), which is supporting a deployment of their new hybrid Rural Optic (RO) technology to help “provide access to 10 dispersed clusters of premises spread across the county.” The new wireless fed FTTP network (yes you read that right) is said to be capable of delivering 100Mbps+ speeds and the contract itself reflects planned coverage for c.4,500 premises.

Work to build the new network finally got underway in April 2019 (here) and today the ISP informs that they’ve just covered 164 premises (homes and businesses) in areas around the extremely remote rural community of Tedstone Wafre, such as Collington.

Martin Cumming, Airband’s Marches Project Manager, said:

“It has been a pleasure engaging with the people in this area – they have been very helpful and supportive and are keen to enjoy faster broadband both for themselves and the rest of their community.

We are going to be working in and around Leintwardine from July and Brimfield in August and then we will be heading towards Hereford, down as far as Much Marcle – so you can expect to see Airband vans, and lots of friendly Airband engineers out and about in these areas!”

Councillor Shaw, Ward Member Bromyard Bringsty, said:

“Faster broadband is so vital in rural areas and this is a wonderful boost for the communities in and around Tedstone Wafre. Fastershire’s investment in faster broadband means that more of the harder to reach parts of Herefordshire can benefit from faster broadband and the ability to work from home, run multiple devices will ultimately make the county a better place to live and work.”

The update includes feedback from local Collington resident Andy Jones, who is a commercial pilot living on a local smallholding. Apparently Andy was recently connected to Airband’s new hybrid Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network and is now receiving a symmetric broadband speed of 80Mbps. So not quite 100Mbps+ but close enough to mark a fairly huge improvement for such a remote area.

Airband’s rollout is scheduled to be complete by the end of Q3 2020.