The BBC's Songs of Praise TV show (BBC One - Sunday at 4.25pm), which is apparently the world's longest running religious TV series, deserves a mention today after it did a wonderful job at the weekend of highlighting how local churches can be used to improve broadband internet access in rural communities.

This week the shows presenter, Pam Rhodes, took at trip to Colchester where some of the local churches have begun attaching discreet Wi-Fi (wireless broadband) antenna's to their steeples. The move allows wireless internet access to cover a much wider area and has been of huge help to broadband starved locals.

The programme, which features Coggeshall Church, does a simple but effective job of explaining how such projects can help in isolated areas. Sadly very little information is provided about the project itself, although we believe that it forms part of the Colchester Borough Council's (CBC) wider Digital Strategy (detailed last July 2011).

Under the plan Colchester will spend the next five years deploying a new range of superfast 40-50Mbps fixed line and 11Mbps Wi-Fi wireless broadband services around the town. We've managed to embed a copy of the related segment below and it's well worth watching (note: for some reason the video embed takes 10-15 seconds before it starts to play).


It's worth pointing out that UK ISP Allpay Broadband and the separate WiSpire project are doing something similar in Herefordshire and Norfolk respectively (here and here).

UPDATE 08:15am

We're now fairly sure that the project featured in Songs of Praise is one run by County Broadband, which is a wireless ISP that also operates in Coggeshall. Prices for their service start at £7.99 per calendar month (1Mbps) and go up to £29.99 for an 8Mbps link.