Residents of Lyddington UK, a small rural village that BT deemed not economically viable for faster broadband services, have banded together and raised £37,000 to setup their own 'up to' 40Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet ( FTTC ) based next generation broadband network.

The service is managed by community ISP Rutland Telecom and claims to be the first provider in the UK to develop FTTC combined with fully unbundled ( LLU ) copper phone lines to deliver superfast broadband services. Average download speeds in the area have now increased from 0.5Mbps to 25Mbps.

The process of deploying Lyddington's new network was not an easy one, taking two years from concept to today's deployment, and required intervention by Ofcom. At present some 50 customers are already using the service, which reaches a total of just 200 homes.


There are currently a multitude of similar schemes taking place in rural and semi-urban locations around the country. Lyddington's experimental service will now also be deployed to a number of other isolated rural villages in Rutland.

However BT has warned that the area risks developing a local monopoly unless it allows rival ISPs access to the new network. That might be fair comment to make against a big provider, but perhaps not in an area where the residents themselves paid to develop their own tiny network because BT refused to do so.

UPDATE 10:51am

BT just sent us their full statement.