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IC ISP Helps Upton Magna Broadband

Posted: 11th Jun, 2003 By: MarkJ

UK ISP Internet Central (IC) has, in cooperation with property agents Balfours and Advantage West Midlands, helped the deployment of broadband services to the Upton Magna business park:

Broadband problems solved for rural Shropshire Business Park

Advantage West Midlands, in partnership with property agents Balfours and ISP Internet Central, today announced the forthcoming deployment of affordable broadband services to Upton Magna Business Park. The business park, on the edge of the small Shropshire village of Upton Magna, houses 14 businesses in converted agricultural buildings and lies outside existing broadband coverage. After signing up 10 companies for broadband services, the letting agents for the business park, Balfours, selected Internet Central to install and manage the service, with the backing of a grant from Advantage West Midlands as part of their Rural Broadband Pilot Programme.

Richard Bayliss of Balfours commented As developers of rural business parks, we realised that lack of broadband could prove a big issue for us. It is getting increasingly difficult to attract companies to developments like Upton Magna if broadband is not available, as many of the companies that can locate in these beautiful rural settings rely on the Internet and fast communications to do business. Thanks to support from Advantage West Midlands, we now have a model for solving this problem that can be applied to future rural business park developments.

Broadband will be delivered using wireless technology supplied by Alvarion, making use of the 2.4Ghz frequency band that was opened up for commercial use in 2002. Once the initial customers at Upton Magna Business Park have been given access to broadband services, Internet Central and Balfours plan to extend services to other businesses and residential customers within range of the base station, thus bringing affordable broadband services to a significant area of rural Shropshire for the first time.

Dave Thorpe, Director of Operations at Internet Central, said: Our flexible and innovative approach has allowed us to put together a solution to service the needs of this rural business community. We look forward to bringing further customers onboard in the coming months. If this proves a success we will examine the viability of similar projects across the region.

James Saunby, head of ICT at Advantage West Midlands, said: Attracting small high-tech businesses is key to the future prosperity of our rural communities, and it is difficult to see how this can happen without broadband availability. Advantage West Midlands is now taking the lessons learnt in Upton Magna and other pilot projects in the programme to plan how we can make broadband available throughout rural areas across the region.

Upton Magna is the fourth pilot to be announced in the Advantage West Midlands Rural Broadband Programme, following pilot projects in Leominster, Bredon Hill in South Worcestershire and Lymedale Business Park in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Services will go live in Leominster in June, with Bredon Hill to follow over the summer and Lymedale in the autumn. Further pilot projects are in development and are expected to be announced in the coming months.

The Rural Broadband Programme is being managed on behalf of Advantage West Midlands by telecommunications consultants Analysys. Richard Wilson, a consultant with Analysys, said: Through the pilot projects, we have discovered that broadband services can be made available in rural areas much more cheaply than previously thought. Advantage West Midlands has had to invest less than GBP150 000 to get four significant pilot projects off the ground. We expect that other regional development agencies will want to follow their lead on this issue.