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Campaign for broadband in Hampshire: Froyle, Bentley, Alton areas

Hi

I'm at the early stages of an investigation in our local area to try to gauge the demand for faster broadand, or even just broadband.

This is a local campaign, and will be featured in the village magazine, noticeboards etc. so posting on here is a bit of a long shot - I'm sure many people in Hampshire (80% of it being rural) have connectivity issues but this is specifically concerned with the areas of

Lower Froyle
Upper Froyle
Bentley

and local areas.

We live in Lower Froyle, which is 2.5km from the exchange, with a line length of 3680m (not sure how, seems very long as it's almost a straight line from what I can see) and our best broadband is a Three 3G modem running at 3Mbps. ADSL is useless (sub 2Mbps). I have discussed this with several ISPs who have all pointed to line quality, not length, being the issue here. Others' speeds are also abysmal and we have nowhere near the longest line.

The project will initially gather information from potential users via a link in the magazine/locally publicised, but if you live in one of the above areas or nearby I'd welcome you getting in touch, do drop me a message.

The neighbouring town of Alton is also poorly served for broadband as it has ADSL only (FTTC rollout complete, but as far as I can tell, no businesses in the town can have it, it's residential only, and even then it's patchy) so there's no guaranteed connectivity there either, and ADSL broadband speeds are abysmal on all the speed maps I have looked at. So in particular, if you're a business user in Alton struggling for broadband, that would be of interest.

This is for both business and personal use and should there be sufficient interest we would then look to approach providers and look at a site survey.

I have spoken to one such provider already who is in turn speaking to Hampshire council and to the organisers of the county wide campaign:

http://www3.hants.gov.uk/broadband

.. so if you're local, and have an interest, do register above and get in touch.
 
Several ISPs, such as Zen Internet and Eclipse Internet, offer business grade FTTC solutions. You don't just have to get it via BT.

Moving on from that and I do wish you the best of luck with your campaign. I know that we covered the wider issues in Hampshire quite recently here:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/20...ncil-launch-superfast-broadband-campaign.html

In regards to the line length issue, that's quite common. BT doesn't always run its copper wires in a loosely straight line from the exchange to people's homes and we've seen cases where somebody living near to their exchange was still technically deemed to be 1 or 2 miles away because of how the cable looped around.

Some good news is that such locations might find a wireless solution to be more viable because superfast services are reasonably nearby, which is useful for tackling supply issues.
 
Hi Mark

I pointed some of the people round here at the article on this website which you mention above :)

In Alton, nobody can offer business grade FTTC solutions, because they haven't done any of the cabinets that businesses connect to. That I can find - I haven't tried every postcode :)

I wonder if much of the town is fed directly underground - certainly in the central bit - so there aren't any cabinets to do. So the option of going to the nearest town to get broadband is tricky too since it's only ADSL, and FTTC is a non starter, it needs someone serious to develop a network in that town that doesn't involve mucking around with phone lines. Though, some residential users can probably get a reasonable service now in the bits they did.

Round here, the appalling performance of the lines means that just sticking some ADSL2+ equipment in the exchange isn't going to be a lot of use to anyone, like Alton, a new network is needed. Over 3km of phone line wasn't an awful lot of good for voice, let alone broadband.

FTTP isn't logistically that difficult here as while rural, the houses tend to all sit "on" the two small roads and so would be easy enough to connect up, they're not all a mile apart with huge drives overlooking nothing.

But realistically, a wireless solution would seem like a decent idea and should be able to supply the two villages with something usable, it's in a slight dip and so the transmitter should be able to be mounted high up enough for line of sight for everyone.
 
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There's a meeting to discuss this on the 14th April and we have a few potential project champions on board.

(The odds of anyone in the local area reading this are slim, I admit, since we're probably talking about no more than 3,000 people)

One thing I'm going to be asked is - "can't BT do it"?

Now, it is possible that BT could indeed supply a broadband service here with FTTC. If the villages have cabinets. Bentley exchange is right next to the only large-ish estate in that village and may be fed overhead only.

Froyle is about 1.8km along the direct road from the exchange and as far as I know, judging by the manhole covers, the line takes a direct route under that road and pops out near where we are in the village (2.5km as crow flies)

There *is* a cabinet on that road. However it looks ancient and unloved and the last time I drove past the door was open. I'm not sure it's used.

Now if it isn't, then BT can't do anything here except FTTP or more cabinets. If it is used, then FTTC might be an option for some people.

The cabinet is about 2.5km from the property furthest from it, I've no idea how VDSL goes over that distance, but I'm assuming it, er, doesn't (the lines round here are poor anyway), so it would only be a partial answer anyway and I'm thinking that a wireless solution would be more comprehensive and could roughly equal or better the FTTC speeds anyway.

Or, for FTTC, perhaps two or three new cabinets would be needed.

Now BT aren't going to have any interest in doing those cabinets anyway, but I know I'll be asked "why can't BT do it?" and in order to know the answer to that, I could do with knowing where the cabinets are.

I know that Rutland had great difficulty getting this data. However for BT['s network] to even be in the running as a possible option here, we need to know whether a FTTC solution could actually work.

I've no doubt that if we get a campaign running and a supplier decides to take up the challenge then the cabinet will go to FTTC pretty well immediately as it no longer has to be commercially viable when there's a competitor, but our objective is to get a longer term, better solution and stick with it, not to wait for years to finally get a five meg FTTC service.

At present, all I can really say is that BT have had no interest in supplying broadband and from the rollout plan show no interest in bringing it here until at least 2015. It would be good to know whether FTTC is technically viable, though. Any views/thoughts?
 
9 times out of 10 the issue for BT isn't so much technical as economic viability. Often they can take the fibre to a cabinet but if that cabinet only serves a few households then there's no financial incentive for them to do it.

On the technical side FTTC type services tend to be reasonably good up to around 300 - 400 metres from the cabinet (service speeds will still be good after 400m, it just gets slower and slower quite quickly; not sure what BT's implementation is like), although some cabinets can cover a significantly larger area than that.

However this is a very linear explanation because you really need to know how the "last mile" copper cable in the ground loops around in order to have a better idea of the resulting service quality and who will/could be reached by it. I will say this though, in the future FTTC will be able to go a lot faster and reach a lot further. For now BT is just being quite cautious with its initial rollout and that could last a couple more years yet.

BT, as you say, doesn't like to let this data go without a fight; give Rutland Telecom an email for more on that. If it's a small community then you can probably get a limited idea just by driving around and marking any cabinets on a map. However some will be hidden from view.
 
Thanks Mark.

Does anyone know what sort of speed might be achieved on a VDSL service where the line length from the cab to the house is 3.5km long (allowing for village expansion):

1. If it's copper, and
2. If it's aliminium (I ask since a 3.6km copper line is supposed to be able to do more than the 1.7Meg we can get, so on that basis, our line isn't copper and nor is our neighbour's)

I've seen speeds of about 33Mbps reported with a 600m line length (presume copper), but this is six times as far.

This would help to ascertain how many cabinets would be needed and at what intervals along the route (4 new cabinets?) if the properties are connected with the existing telephone lines and, of course, making the assumption (which I think is reasonable here) that there aren't any "invisible cabinets" en route and that that is indeed the route.

The route could be a mad one, but in all honesty the route can't go all that many ways because it doesn't go "round the houses" since there aren't all that many and they're in a line on two roads. You can make a logical stab at the exact routing; but even if it isn't logical, there aren't that many ways it could be done. (He says)
 
I think the answer lies here

http://www.ericsson.com/ericsson/corpinfo/publications/review/2006_01/files/vdsl2.pdf

"the physical reach of VDSL1 is limited to around 1500m on 0.4mm cable" (page 7)

So at least two new cabinets would be needed.

However that's based on 0.4mm cable. Knowing the lines here are substandard - perhaps aliminium - and certainly ancient - without those extra cabinets I'm thinking we'd see a some double digit meg performers but this isn't going to be a lot of use in the medium to longer term and I doubt we'll get a second campaign going any time soon.

I can't quite see anyone installing at least 2 more cabinets and potentially replacing the lines with new copper ones, to serve 1100 premises, so I think the technology is just wrong for the location and configuration of the area. What do others think?
 
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One more question :)

What's the more expensive, greater effort option:

1. Running fibre along the two roads to each house (the layout is ideal for this) and perhaps back to the exchange, if that's where the supplier put the equipment - so a new single duct along about 1.8km of narrow road in the middle of nowhere, which should be easy enough to run, and then presumably one of those "bury the fibre in the road" tools (you can tell I'm not technical on this) to run along past the properties;

2. Putting an antenna on every chimney and accurately aligning it to a wireless transmitter

I'm guessing that option 2 is certainly the cheaper more pragmatic option as it only involves effort where the service is to be supplied.

On the other hand, if the take-up were high, perhaps 50% of properties, does option 1 become the more sensible?

I realise this is distilling what's probably quite a complex question into a couple of bullet points but would really appreciate thoughts on this.
 
Much as you say, it depends upon on so many factors that are different for each area.

In my experience, with only a few exceptions (e.g. Shetland Islands), anything that involves physically digging up the road tends to have all sorts of financial, legal and technical problems associated with it. Just take a look at the i3 Group and what happened to them, they had millions of investment but only ever covered a tiny patch of Bournemouth. We knew that the game was up almost as soon as they admitted to digging up the roads instead of using sewers.

It use to be a lot easier but the last government introduced all sorts of new taxes and regulation to protect communities against bad road works (..and to get more tax revenue), which is fine but it wasn't well balanced against the need to keep existing infrastructure updated.

Ironically some remote rural communities are a lot easier to reach with fibre optic cables, thanks in no small part to ease of accessibility and community involvement. However there's a big difference between getting the community of a rural village to help dig their own trenches through soil and trying to do the same in a larger village/town with lots of concrete roads and legal complexities.

As for wireless, well on paper it always looks like the cheaper solution but in reality it depends a lot upon line-of-sight, local topography and planning permission etc. You'd also only end up with one choice of ISP and the pool of expertise in this area is somewhat limited in supply as there are so few of those.
 
I'm assuming we'll get a choice of one, anyway, whether FTTP or wireless, as the only way to have greater choice is if BT were to lay the FTTP and I can't see that happening any time in the next decade, so it would have to be someone else and not wholesaled. I think we have to accept this.

It still leaves choice - e.g. 1meg ADSL or 100meg fibre, so people can still choose.There's a fair chance BT will be along to fibre up the cabinet as soon as there's an alternative solution anyway so the choice might be 5 to 30 meg FTTC or 100meg FTTP. In this respect it's important (for everyone including the provider) that the solution is better than the BT option and is the natural choice.

All the roads are minor roads with little traffic. Given that East Hampshire CC has its own programme for broadband investment and getting broadband to people, I'd hope there would be some joined up thinking in terms of allowing the roads to be dug up, I can't see it taking weeks and weeks of work, and I'd thought the fibre could be laid without digging up the roads anyway with some special tool you featured on here in an article once. Mind you the roads aren't the urban concrete type and tend to fall to bits periodically, so might have to dig deeper than that.

The point about people laying their own trench from road to premises is a good one, I'll see what response this receives.

For wireless - the area is hilly (near the North Downs). However I'd have thought there would be somewhere high enough with line of sight to the whole area.

Perhaps we'll find a wireless broadband expert in the village and we can set up our own solution. Long shot, though :-)
 
Wonder if I can get some advice as I'm starting to look at areas of this which are well beyond my expertise now and even if a private company comes along and does all of this for us, I still need to know the technical issues and decision factors. For the moment I'm assuming wireless is going to be the pragmatic option though the same issues apply to FTTP.

So, to wireless: there are two possible locations for the wireless transmitter. Conveniently the best location is very near to our house (can I run a fixed-line spur off the transmitter to my house... only joking) so we need to get the backhaul up to the top of a hill.

There are two exchanges. One in the next village 4km away from that site, and one in the next town about 7km away.

From the top of that hill we should have line of sight to the former but probably not to the latter. That said there isn't much between them (nothing for about 6km then one housing estate, some houses and shops then the exchange in a roughly straight line).

The village exchange serves 1300 premises; more or less the same 1300 premises that our potential solution will serve. However I'm not sure that the backhaul could be supplied from there:

Assuming BT ADSL MAX works to something like 0.5meg capacity downstream per user and assuming 65% take-up, that exchange only actually needs backhaul of circa 400Mbps downstream. So would it have say a 0.5Gbps backhaul and as such be unable to supply say a 1Gbps dedicated connection anyway on top of that since that's twice what the whole exchange has to itself?

If it comes from the town exchange - that presumably has enough (or could have enough) capacity to supply that backhaul but getting it here would be fun. From the village exchange it's about a 4km run along two quiet rural roads, not an especially big deal (he says). From the town one I suspect wireless would be the only practical way of getting it here, bearing in mind line of sight issues. Where the transmitter goes is a mystery.

My instinct is to look at where the exchanges are, however, does where the exchanges are have anything to do with it: in so far as, does this have to involve BT and exchanges in some shape or form? For example, if we DIY this, can we simply buy a leased line from company X (whoever it is) and if we did, again does that have to involve BT/exchanges? (All my experience is from the exchange downwards not upwards!) - if so how would they get the link here; where from; how would they tackle this? (The nearest Virgin Media point of presence is 15 miles away in Aldershot)
 
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None of these are easy questions to answer without conducting a proper survey of the local infrastructure or hiring somebody whom is more familiar with the telecoms make-up of your area. Local business focused ISPs are likely to have a good handle on such issues, otherwise they wouldn't be doing their jobs correctly. You definitely can't do this sort of thing on your own and it does need some input from an ISP that's willing to work with you.

I think your best bet here is to ask Fibrestream or Rutland Telecom for some advice as they're both well experienced in this area. Whatever your local setup, the problem is likely to be finding the best bandwidth supplier and related connectivity and I fear that BT may be the only option for your area.
 
I'm trying to go "half way". That's to say, to see what issues a potential provider is likely to face to assess viability.

I'd rather approach Rutland or whoever with a complete list of potential subscribers, their numbers, their locations, what's here now - basically, do part of their "job" for them to understand the dynamics involved and also so that when someone on the planning committee asks "why?" (in any context) I can supply an answer. Indeed Rutland requests some of this information before getting involved anyway.

Getting the backhaul up the hill isn't an issue. Having got a quote now (which was within 5k of what I'd guessed it would be for a five year term and a 0.5Gbps link) the link would come via the Bentley phone exchange with additional backhaul being added to support this. The figures (given the quote and the potential subscriber numbers) look encouraging so far. I haven't a clue what the wireless transmitter will cost.

The nearest Virgin Media point of presence is 15 miles away hence that route, I'd imagine -it can't be trunked off from a VM POP. Am I right in thinking that for this location the only "ISP" at an infrastructural level is BT anyway and regardless of who you contact, it's still BT infrastructure e.g. there isn't some other company that has fibre running down the A31 who could supply?

I'm trying to assess how difficult it's going to be for a potential provider to dig up the roads and lay FTTH at the moment.
 
If you were surveying users about their current speeds, and you wanted a fair assessment - and, you know that everyone you're surveying who uses ADSL (as opposed to 3G) is on BT 20CN (since that's all the exchange has)

What speed tester would you point people at? Would results from more than one be useful?

The results are all going to be 135kbps through about 6.7Mbps tops e.g. all fairly miserable - in this respect I'm not actually sure the results are of that much use in themselves since they're all really slow, but the survey then goes on to ask about how you use it, etc
 
Well we prefer TB's speedtester and it's used on our own page, although the downside is that you have to install Java to make it work.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/speed/

We also have a Flash based tester, which has always been fine for me, but others claim they're less reliable.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/speed/index1.shtml

Ultimately these tests will only produce anecdotal results, but that's not really a problem. The key is getting people to perform several tests over a period of say.. one week, ideally one in the morning, one during midday and one at night. This actually gives you some useful feedback.
 
Hi guys,

I also live in Froyle. I luckily have a reasonable broadband connection running from 5Mb/s to 6Mb/s.

Some good news (hopefully)! BT is upgrading a lot of rural exchanges to 21CN, as FTTC runs on a 21CN backhaul this will make it much easier for BT to install fibre as the exchange currently can't support it. There isn't any info on the Bentley exchange yet but it's a possibility. It could take a couple of months to finalise the list so I'll keep you updated.
 
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Wireless isn't great to be honest and it's usually installed on a per customer base, not for a whole area. Plus, it only reaches max speeds of about 10Mb/s (which with lots of people would be even slower than traditional broadband).

FTTC is much better as if cabs were placed in different points around Froyle eveybody would be able to get over 15Mb/s (probably more like 25Mb/s).
 
Blimey - someone else in Froyle!

Are you somewhere over near to the Bentley side, near that BT cabinet? I do have a report of one person who can get about 6Mbps in that location (near Hussey's Lane) which would be a line about 2km long.

The Bentley exchange was scheduled for 21CN upgrade in 2009, but the date was just quietly dropped. That said, the upgrade wouldn't make any difference to us (near the village hall, 3.6km line length) nor would it bring much if any improvement to those up near the Hen and Chicken.

Even if the exchange is upgraded, the speeds attainable in the majority of the village would probably only just about qualify as "broadband" and I'm looking to the longer term though I suspect Bentley residents on that "estate" where the GP surgery is would see real gains. It enables a box to be ticked that the village has "up to 24Mbps broadband", but in reality, a 6Mbps connection will probably only go to about 9Mbps on ADSL2+ and that would be one of the best lines.

From what I can ascertain the village has only one cabinet (as above) and so even if fibre were run to that cabinet, the cab to property line lengths are too long in many cases to support any kind of next-gen service, so more cabinets would be needed which I doubt we'd get when each would service so few properties. Fibre to the premises is ideal here.

Not sure if I'm in time for the next issue of the magazine, but intend putting an update in there so do keep an eye out for that, also the community planning website will be launching soon and there's a piece I'm putting together for that - URL will be published in the magazine when live.

If you can complete the survey when you get the details that would be really helpful so a better picture can emerge as to who gets what speeds.
 
We're also at the Village Hall end. We're on the junction next to the village notice board. So our line must be amazing if we can get 6Mb (most of the time).
 
You actually live about 400m from our place.

It's possible that some of the lines are copper @ 0.5mm gauge - perhaps yours, because your line length should be circa 2.7km which does suggest 6Mbps is far from impossible.

The extra 1km our line has (I am guessing that the line comes from that cabinet, up one side of the village high street almost as far as Manderley and then back again on the other side of the road giving that extra 1km - it's the only way I can see that length being possible) coupled with the potential for it to be narrower gauge or even aliminimum means the speed drops sharply. The perishing GPO circuitry we have might also be a contributory factor.

What the survey will show is which is the more typical - nearer 6Mbps or nearer 2Mbps. That said, 6Mbps isn't next-gen broadband, and neither would the WBC upgrade bring next-gen either. Our 3G modem runs at 5Mbps to 6Mbps down and usually 1Mbps to 1.7Mbps up, but that speed is so slow it's driving me mad.

But, then, it may be perfectly adequate for those who use it. Certainly "faster broadband" was one of the points noted in the feedback forms from the recent village fete. A better solution will depend on true demand.

The provisional list for the WBC upgrade is out (news item on front page), but Bentley is not on that list :(
 
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