{"id":11117,"date":"2016-02-15T01:02:04","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T01:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=11117"},"modified":"2016-02-15T06:58:37","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T06:58:37","slug":"b4rn-brings-1gbps-ftth-broadband-to-1600-rural-homes-in-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2016\/02\/b4rn-brings-1gbps-ftth-broadband-to-1600-rural-homes-in-england.html","title":{"rendered":"B4RN Bring 1Gbps Broadband to 1,600 Rural Homes in North England"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s fast approaching three years since the community built and funded B4RN<\/a> (Broadband for the Rural North<\/em>) project first picked up shovels and began building their own ultrafast 1000Mbps Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH<\/a>) network to parts of rural Lancashire, Cumbria and Yorkshire.<\/p>\n

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Nothing about what B4RN<\/a> does is easy, whether that’s having to dig through a muddy field in the middle of a rain storm or trying to figure out inventive ways of crossing rivers and roads. Never the less their efforts, fuelled by frustration at BT<\/a>’s neglect of so many rural areas, has driven them forward and helped to garner support from an increasing number of isolated communities.<\/p>\n

Almost one year ago B4RN celebrated the connection of its 1,000th customer and today they have well over 1,600 premises connected<\/strong> (adding about 100 per month, limited by manpower not demand). In fact they’re adding at such a rapid pace that they’ll soon need to buy in some extra IPv4 address space (even with IPv6 around you still need IPv4 for full Internet access).<\/p>\n

So far B4RN claims to have 800km of core network<\/strong> installed and the take-up in related communities tends to average around 65%, which is extremely impressive. On the financial front the company is almost entirely community funded, with 778 shareholders holding a total of \u00a31.5 million<\/strong> (shares) and another \u00a31 million<\/strong> loaned to the company from the community.<\/p>\n

All of this is supported by 8 full time and 2 part time employees, with B4RN aiming to take on another 4 shortly in order to further boost their workforce and support. Mind you this overlooks the countless volunteers who often turn up, committing their spare time in exchange for shares, in order to help dig, splice and generally expand the reach of pure fibre optic connectivity.<\/p>\n

\"b4rn_fibre_optic_digger_in_action\"<\/div>\n

At this point it’s worth noting that standard customers pay just \u00a330 per month<\/strong> for a 1000Mbps (symmetrical) unlimited service and there’s also a one-off connection fee of \u00a3150, which is incredibly cheap when you consider that it’s FTTH<\/a> and there’s no separate line rental cost to pay on top. None of this would be possible without all those excellent volunteers.<\/p>\n

Planning for the Future<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

As it stands B4RN has completed nearly all of their originally planned network and they’re self-sufficient (able to cover all their running costs), but they’re not stopping any-time soon either and the project’s website gives a clear hint of their plans for future coverage.<\/p>\n

Communities Installing B4RN<\/strong><\/p>\n