Chancellor Rishi Sunak Visits B4RN’s Rural Gigabit Full Fibre Project UPDATE

The UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, appears to have taken some time out from questions over his family’s tax affairs to see how public investment is helping rural ISP B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) to deploy a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to homes in the North Yorkshire hamlet of Cotterdale.

The operator, which is a registered Community Benefit Society (i.e. it can’t be bought by a commercial operator and profits are distributed back into the community), first began deploying FTTP broadband services to remote rural homes in Lancashire during 2012, and they’ve since expanded across various parts of Cheshire, Cumbria, Northumberland, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Yorkshire.

So far B4RN has managed to cover over 17,000 premises (June 2021 figure), with more than 10,000 customers connected (recent figure). On top of that, they’ve also become quite well-known for tackling the government on complex issues of public funding for rural broadband delivery – much as we saw last year when they succeeded in campaigning for a key change to Project Gigabit‘s rural voucher scheme (here).

Despite this, the operator recently received a visit from the Secretary of State for DCMS, Nadine Dorries, who came to see how their voucher funding was helping to extend B4RN’s network across 458 premises in Kirkoswald (Cumbria). Now one of their other projects in Cotterdale also been visited by the UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak (he’s the local MP for Richmond, Yorks, too).

The Cotterdale project was part-funded by the Government’s broadband gigabit voucher scheme for rural areas, which contributed £47,000 towards the total cost of the scheme. Meanwhile, local volunteers helped to dig 6 miles of ducting and local landowners assisted by granting free wayleaves (legal land access agreements) to B4RN.

The network was laid about 3 miles along the roadside of the A684 from the Moorcock Inn in Upper Wensleydale to Thwaite Bridge Farm, before being led north over the fell and into Cotterdale.

Rishi Sunak said:

“This is a tremendous example of what can be achieved. Cotterdale is one of the most isolated parts of my constituency and yet it now has broadband speed and quality better than many of our cities.

The volunteers and B4RN have done an excellent job in overcoming geographical isolation and I am delighted that scheme has also been assisted by £47,000 of Government funding – direct to households and businesses – through the Gigabit Broadband Voucher scheme.”

Mr. Sunak was invited to complete the last connection (splice) for the Cotterdale project – a remote hut on the estate. In total, B4RN’s deployment to the hamlet has taken about 12-months to reach completion.

Customers of the service pay £30 per month for a symmetric 1Gbps connection (plus £150 installation) and if you want 10Gbps then that will set you back £150 per month (plus £360 installation).

UPDATE 2:32pm

B4RN has kindly informed us that their network coverage has increased to 20,000 premises passed since June 2021.