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Broadband4Brinscall Campaign Update

Posted: 26th May, 2003 By: MarkJ
The Broadband 4 Brinscall campaign is today celebrated its first year of operation and has updated on its ambitions for the future. Sadly the area has yet to be covered by ADSL, although it's hoped that will soon change:

The Broadband 4 Brinscall campaign launched officially launched one year today. I think this makes us the longest running single area broadband campaign in the UK?

The Broadband 4 Brinscall campaign launched on the 26/05/02 when I distributed 600 flyers around Brinscall and the 5 surrounding villages (Abbey Village, Higher Wheelton, Wheelton, Withnell and Withnell Fold) asking people to express if they had an interest in broadband by voting in an anonymous online poll hosted on www.Broadband4Brinscall.co.uk . During the six weeks of operation of the poll 126 votes were cast of which 110 households wanted ADSL, 15 households would consider ADSL and 1 household considered ADSL to be too expensive.

When the BT pre-registration scheme was introduced on the 1st July I closed the online poll. During late July I sent out another 1670 flyers to the 6 villages that the Brinscall exchange serves asking people to pre-register. So far the Brinscall exchange has 157 pre-registrations.

The ward for Brinscall and the surrounding villages is Withnell. The Withnell ward has a population of approximately 3700 and contains 4 primary schools and one Health centre.

I have been in discussion with the North West Development Agency regarding their broadband fund. They have stated that they would like to help Brinscall but can not simply grant an award to BT to upgrade the exchange. I have also had 2 meetings with Chorley Borough Council (Andy Oddy) and Lancashire County Council (Paul Hepburn).

The Broadband 4 Brinscall campaign has been featured in the Chorley Guardian on the 29/05/02 and the Chorley Citizen on the 06/06/02. The campaign has also has 2 mentions on Radio Lancashire since it began on the 26/05/02.

The Brinscall the exchange was classed as unviable at the end of March 2003 but was given a 300 trigger level on the 15th April 2003 due to the "new" BT subtending technology which allows BT to link the backhaul from several exchanges in an area, thereby reducing the overall costs.

We ordered approx 2200 flyers from BT around the 24th April and are still waiting for any confirmation let along delivery. We might just have to do the flyer drop again ourselves.

Now for the interesting bit

As the Brinscall exchange was not review by BT until early March and we hold the view that the bandwidth provided by ADSL will be obsolete in 5 to 8 years time we have since November 02 been looking at alternative technological and business approaches to bring affordable, sustainable and almost future proof broadband infrastructure to our area.

We had started conducting a preliminary feasibility study of forming a community not for profit company to install a community fibre to the home Ethernet network to the area covered by the Brinscall telephone exchange and spread the cost over 20 years.

We aimed to implement an open network model by not providing any services ourselves but to allow/invite (separation of infrastructure and services) multiple service providers to provide services over the said network on a revenue sharing basis, i.e. VoIP Telephone, broadband internet and IP TV (cable TV via IP).

The Brinscall exchange has approx 2500 lines and serves a total population of approx 4000 which is divided up into 6 close proximity villages (Abbey Village, Brinscall, Higher Wheelton, Wheelton, Withnell and Withnell Fold) of about 2000 households covering about 8 square miles.

The regulatory hurdle seemed to have been removed with the civil infrastructure clause in the new communications bill, which is on track to become UK law in July 03. The bill allows local councils and community groups to provide the required civil broadband infrastructure and grants them the same code powers as the Telephone and Utilities companies. We received clarification from the DTI that the civil infrastructure clause only allows the provision of ducting and not fibre as we hoped. I think the civil infrastructure clause is a good idea but does not go far enough as it is limited to ducting and thus promotes infrastructure competition which our area is far to small to support. Provided sufficient backhaul is in place service competition is another matter!

The two companies we believe have the most appropriate technology to enable the creation of an open fibre to the home network are PacketFront (www.packetfront.com) and World Wide Packets (www.worldwidepackets.com). Of the two PacketFront seems to have the most elegant solution delivering the lowest Opex. With this in mind we obtained a quote from PacketFront to perform a pre-technical study and were seeking funding from the North West Development Agency's Broadband fund for the said pre-technical study and rollout out if feasible.

The pre-technical study involved investigating the requirements for service provider integration into the communities network.

I attended a meeting at Telewest's Woking HQ with Chris Boar their principal engineer (Network Strategy) and his manager in early March. Telewest were interested in investigating the supply of the backhaul with Voice over IP telephone service and broadband internet. They have however stated that they have no interest in IP TV as they have no IP TV infrastructure at their headend in Preston Lancashire. Not much addition equipment would be need but that is another matter.

We have put the above project on hold for now to see if we can achieve the 300 trigger level for our exchange. I hope you find some of the above of some interest.
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