Airband Upgrades Wireless Broadband in Dartmoor and Exmoor

The Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) programme have announced that UK ISP Airband has upgraded their Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) based “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) network in remote rural parts of England’s Dartmoor and Exmoor National Parks, which should bring more capacity and reliability.

Just to recap. The original £4.6m contract to cover 5,800 premises in the Dartmoor and Exmoor National Parks with a superfast wireless network was awarded to Airband by CDS in 2015 (here) and completed in 2019. Since then the network has expanded a little and now covers around 7,000 homes and businesses in the area.

The provider has now commissioned a number of new upgrades to ensure that customers on the moors continue to get a good service. The changes include the installation of lithium-ion batteries on its masts, as well as upgrades to its mast radios and linking the FWA network to its new optical fibre infrastructure (i.e. capacity boost and stronger network resilience).

Jon Parkes, Airband’s Infrastructure Manager, said:

“Power cuts are fairly common on the moors, but by replacing standard lead acid batteries on each mast with lithium-ion batteries, our masts can provide internet service without external power for significantly longer.

With the increased internet usage throughout lockdown, we knew we had to upgrade the amount of data our network was handling. We’re upgrading our mast radios to double their throughput to ensure our customers have more data to work with.

We also wanted to work on resilience and to that end, we are adding a link between our fibre optic network and the National Parks system. This ensures that the National Parks can draw a connection from two sources, and if either link is interrupted, the system will stay functional.”

Customers on their FWA service typically pay £38 per month to receive an unlimited 30-40Mbps (10Mbps upload) connection on a 12-month contract term (plus a £99 one-off installation charge). Airband also have a separate Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network in other areas (now the main focus of their current and future builds), which has cheaper pricing for even faster speeds (going up to 900Mbps).