Posted: 15th Apr, 2010 By: MarkJ

UK ISP Rutland Telecom (RT) has announced that the Welsh '
not-spot' village of Erbistock (Wrexham) will be the next location to benefit from its unbundled 'up to' 40Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet ( FTTC ) broadband technology. The news follows yesterdays success by RT in delivering the same service to Lyddington (
here).
The initiative, backed by private investment, will apparently be the first time that VDSL2 and Fibre Optic based broadband technology has been used in a Welsh rural village. The process exploits telecoms legislation that allows the BT copper wire network to be used by smaller companies ( LLU unbundling ).
Fibre-to-the-Cabinet technology ( FTTC ) delivers a fast fibre optic link to the operators street level cabinets, while the remaining connection (between cabinets and homes) is done using VDSL2 (similar to current ADSL broadband but faster over short distances) through existing copper cable; FTTC will initially deliver speeds of up to 40Mbps (uploads should reach up to 10Mbps).
Mark Melluish of Rutland Telecom said:
"In the beginning we understandably concentrated on the technical aspect of our service but the way these projects are financed is equally important if the next phase of rural community broadband projects is to be successful. It is also clear that in the future there will be little, if any, chance of rural areas receiving public funding to assist in developing and fulfilling their broadband ambitions.
Rutland Telecom is encouraging and assisting rural communities to explore ways of raising the necessary capital such as looking at partnerships or joint ventures, which will ensure local investors get a financially attractive and acceptable rate of return.
Its financial model takes into account potential population sign up and service charges and can demonstrate not only the investment required but a rate of return to be enjoyed by those willing to take part.
Over the past few months we have been in discussion with several groups outside of Rutland who have all expressed interest in what we have achieved here. Quite a number of those discussions are still continuing but today we are very pleased to announce that our first project, outside of Rutland, will be in the village of Erbistock, near Wrexham.
This will be a joint venture between Rutland Telecom and a local group of investors. They will use the higher speeds delivered by the Next Generation Broadband service to assist with their rural commercial office development. It will also allow them to benefit the local community by providing a service in that area."
Erbistock is another picturesque rural area, just like Lyddington, that BT would have found to be not economically viable for such a service. The local population is tiny and spread out over a wide area, although clearly there was enough interest to make RT believe that BT's assessment was wrong. We hope to see more projects like this in the future.