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

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I'm in dialogue with the IT department of the school, who are being enormously helpful. The good news is that Froyle has a fibre optic link which comes into the village in one possible location for further onward distribution via Wi-Fi or more fibre. The bad news is that the other end is attached to the Holybourne school site, not the Alton exchange/other POP, but perhaps a provider might be able to "join the missing link". I'll post back when I have more news, but if that fibre and ducting could be repurposed it would save a fair big of road digging.
 
I think that more fibre would be better. The village could setup some cabinets to give everybody over 15Mb/s downstream. Then in the future it could be upgraded to fibre to the premises. Fibre will always be better than WiFi, I'd go the fibre route, but just my two cents.
 
Fibre is futureproof (or at least, as far as is practical) and is the ideal solution. I would love us to be able to have fibre to the premises, but that is the most expensive possible solution as things stand and involves the disruption of digging up the roads. But then as I mentioned earlier, it's almost an "urban" style deployment - in the main it's just two roads. Though granted they're not the modern tarmac type. It would involve people changing the way they drive out of the village for a very short while (but then lots have already had to do that since the petrol station stopped selling petrol....!)

Wi-Fi has come a fair way and appears to be a realistic option for superfast broadband speeds both upstream and downstream, and may prove to be the best option in terms of time, cost and coverage. However I'd be looking for us to have 25Mbps+ and an upgrade path, and need to look at this closely in terms of the cell locations, repeater(s) and technical options. Again much depends on take-up, both now, and forecast. We do need the survey results to see this. With Wi-Fi only the houses that want the service get the chimney antenna which will save a lot of money.

Neither of these need any cabinets. The cabinets are only needed for fibre to the cabinet where the premises are connected via the existing phone lines, which brings us back to the line length and line quality issues; the first is solved by the cabinets (if there are enough of them) but the second is not (e.g. someone with an aliminium line, which I suspect ours is, would need the cabinet almost outside the front door to get 25Mbps; at just ~700m the speed drops to ~16Mbps - might as well carry on with the fibre if it's one cabinet per two or three homes, the cost per home becomes staggering); I'd worked out that we probably need two or three more cabinets in the village to just manage superfast broadband services for nearly, though not, everyone. Were this a built up urban area there's a fair chance those cabinets would be possible and pragmatic. It's frustrating that there's not much to build on, it's more or less "from scratch".

Though, BT could of course tender for the project with a mix of FTTC and FTTP necessitating replacement of said aliminium lines ("D sides"). Or, another provider could pay BT for access and run their own "phone line" but then you're back to argument that you might as well run fibre.

On the other hand, it might be that ours is the only aliminium line in the village (or there's some other reason why 3.6km of wire can't manage 2Mbps), or it could be that the aliminium is on the "E side" (the ducting from Bentley) which is bypassed with the cabinets. We can't know, but the speed survey results will give us an idea.

One of the issues is that, of all the options, that one is going to face the greatest resistance from residents given where they would probably have to be located, which would be a potential issue for something like cable (the cabinets also need to be fairly close to the property, not as close as BT's version because it's co-ax to the home not phone line and because the signal is amplified, but it can only be amplified so far). The larger BT cabinets are about 5 foot high by 4 foot wide though smaller ones exist, and from a technical and logistical point of view, the locations become a little non-negotiable.

I've already been contacted by a number of parties with regard to this project through this site and other sources (thank you - I'll get back to you all), and the possibility of repurposing the fibre that comes to the village is being pursued.

This has reached about the edge of my technical knowledge now, but whoever we put out a tender to (assuming it gets that far, again depends on how interested people are and what they are prepared to pay - this may still go nowhere) can take our own research and work out the logistics in more detail to assess the feasibility of the different options.

But, I get ahead of myself; I'm with you on fibre to the premises versus Wi-Fi but while "better broadband" came up repeatedly in the feeback from residents, it's all about the money!
 
I understand perfectly. Cable is virtually impossible as any service offered by Virgin will go over a cable that has been there for a long time. Virgin don't install cable in new areas so that is not going to really work.

Personally, the best option for fibre would be to get a private company to do it. If the village could prove that the company could make a return they might consider doing it.

The fibre service soon to be offered by Fujitsu is an option. If you perhaps emailed the speed survey to them, they might be able to look into it.

Let me know what you think.
 
Hi arobertson676

It's been a while coming :) But the community planning website is up and running, as is the broadband survey. In addition the site has a series of "more info" tech pages for those really interested in the technical side of things who want to learn more. Basically, a very cut-down version of all the aspects discussed in this thread.

The village magazine is on its way courtesy of your local distributors and if it isn't with you already, it should be landing on your doormat in the next couple of days. Bit odd really, you found out via this site, and the magazine has an article written by someone living practically next door to you :)

So hoping to get your survey results - I'll keep you updated as we progress. I'll be fascinated to see the results; nobody is going to get above 6.5Mbps (unless they have 3G, he he) and I'm expecting a fairly random spread of speeds round the area including some really appalling ones. (Ours would be appalling were it not for that fat 3G antenna!)

I might fine tune the thing a little, it was originally set up by another resident using Joomla which isn't something I have any prior experience of but there's a fair bit of content about the aforementioned house parties, the campaign, the working groups and so on. If you haven't been to a house party yet, I'll probably be hosting a larger one in the village hall as a "mop up" session for all those who couldn't get along to the smaller house parties, so perhaps we'll actually meet :)

You might have seen the Hambleton Fibre to the premises project (news article on here), there's a link to that in the "Further reading" page, that would be brilliant if we could get it. But, it's all about what people want. If only four people in the village are interested then there's little scope for progress. But, having had a preview of the feedback from the house parties so far, broadband is coming up again and again as an issue and sore point. The questions about "What would you be prepared to pay" will prove key to this.
 
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I've completed the survey. I am not currently getting 5.8Mbps currently as I have had some problems with stability which has effected the speed, but it is picking up and that is what I usually get so I think that's okay.

How is the survey going?
 
Can I suggest that you should perhaps add a link to the that says something like "Is there Anything I can Do to Improve my Current Speed?" As there are a lot of easy things people could do that would make their speeds slightly better. After visiting a neighbour recently, I was able to get there speed up from under 500Kbps to 3.2Mbps! That was just their wiring!
 
I promised I'd get there in the end :) New user registrations are trickling in slowly; because I've asked for two speed test results I'd expect it to be a little while before we get many results back.

The wiring tips sounds like a good idea - I'll do just that. That said, this is about something longer term; the best anyone is going to get from ADSL is 6.7Mbps which is abysmal in this day and age (I recognise it's the country average, allegedly, that's dire as well) and in our house there's nothing that can be done because we have an ancient star wiring configuration close to perishing, it's all just so hopelessly naff and antiquated. Yes, I could rewire it myself (even though I'm not allowed to, because it is not "customer's internal wiring"), but the performance still wouldn't be any kind of solution. But if people can get more out of their lines in the meantime that can only be a good thing.

I spoke with East Hants yesterday about their plans, and updated the information on the site (the link further down on the left hand side) - they have a bid in with BDUK, expect to hear back soon, and on that basis if successful would look to move to procurement around the middle of 2012 with possible rollouts from early 2013.

Encouragingly (and the call was very encouraging, a fair bit of useful information was exchanged in both directions) they're trialling a variety of different technologies since Hampshire is 85% rural by geography (25% by population) so presents some special logistical challenges for fixed line options.

As regards the survey, it's very early days yet. We have some results in ranging from sub 1Mbps to 6.1Mbps (I think my 3G thing is winning at the moment, laughable really!) which is broadly what I'd expected. I wondered whether asking for the router stats might put people off as it's a bit "tech" but they're very useful in order to get a picture of the quality of the lines, which has a bearing on the possible performance of a cabinet based solution.

Oh, and the village does have two cabinets - there's one near the Hen and Chicken apparently, I've never seen it - must be well hidden. Have you seen it :)

Keep an eye on the site, as I'll post up a "wall of speeds" page when we have enough results to do so, with the results so far (that won't personally identify anyone, just to reassure you).

And thanks for being one of the first to complete the survey. Aside from the broadband, there is quite a range of interesting local planning stuff going on, so the site will be very useful as we go forward.
 
Just to update you: if I exclude my 3G connection (because it's much quicker and distorts the results) and look only at ADSL surveys, the current averages are:

Downstream: 3.5Mbps
Upstream: 0.32Mbps

Bit higher than I'd thought, but utterly woeful - that's a mix of Upper and Lower Froyle. Many results yet to come though.
 
We haven't received very many survey results yet (considering the number of people complaining about broadband or lack thereof at the meetings) so it appears that not everyone reads the village magazine. Shock, horror :-)

I've utterly failed to involve Bentley since it doesn't appear to have a functional steering group or committee (not sure what's going on there) so will pursue Binsted to see if they would like to get involved.

There's another piece due to go in the next mag. If you know of anyone who might be interested, do give them a shove to have a look at the community site and fill in the survey.

With respect to the speeds, they'll all be cr** throughout the village, so the speeds aren't all that important, but the level of interest, is. I have a feeling this may involve me going door to door at some point, could do with the exercise I suppose :)
 
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I've come across similar situations myself. Getting the message out is really difficult in a lot of places where the "community" isn't 'connected' together as well as it could be. Others found a solution by printing out some clear / simple flyers and posting them through peoples mail boxes, complete with a link back to a website that they'd setup; this seemed to work but took a bit of time.

The key is grabbing people's attention about the core issue(s) within the first line or two. A bit of big / bold text doesn't hurt and don't ramble.. keep it simple.
 
Dear all
I run a small WISP in Basingstoke, www.hiwifi.co.uk taking my backhaul from multiple FTTC in Basingstoke and linking it onward to places like Beggarwood, which are fed from cabinets o BT have not deployed FTTC in... Perhaps I could be of assistance? Feel free to give me a call on 01256 810630
Rgds
Tim Robinson
 
An update to this of interest to anyone following, which was sent to all the respondents:

--

Campaign for faster broadband: UPDATE March 2012

Many thanks for taking the time to complete the broadband survey online at the community planning website. We've got the results of your survey and others, and thought you might be interested to know what sort of speeds others in the village are getting.

Based on the ADSL broadband survey results so far, here are the current averages:

Downstream speeds
Best: 5.8Mbps
Average: 2.7Mbps
Worst: 0.5Mbps

Upstream speeds
Best: 0.4Mbps
Average: 0.3Mbps
Worst: 0.2Mbps

This compares with an overall national average broadband speed of between 4Mbps and 7Mbps depending on which survey you look at, and basic fibre-based cable packages to those lucky enough to live in cabled streets start from 10Mbps downstream.

Disappointingly, Froyle isn't scheduled to receive any upgrades to its broadband services at any time for the foreseeable future. However, East Hampshire County Council have submitted a bid for BDUK [Broadband Delivery UK] funding so as to be able to upgrade broadband services in the overall area. This from our Campaign Manager at East Hants:

"Hampshire County Council submitted its bid in November last year and had this approved in Jan 2012. We are waiting for confirmation from BDUK about when we can start the procurement process but hope this will be by May or June 2012 for physical work to start in Jan 2013".

Even if a Grant is awarded, it does not necessarily mean that our area would benefit. That's why it's so important that we get as many survey results as possible, so thanks for submitting yours.

If there's anyone you know who you think might be interested in the Campaign please do forward the details to them, so that they can register on the website and send their details. If you think they might have difficulty finding out the information or taking part, or might need some technical help, it's available - just let me know so I can assist.

There's more about the Campaign on the community planning website.

I'll let you know of any further developments, and keep you up to date. If however you'd rather I didn't, just email me back.

Thank you.
 
I see it :) Mind you, it's had one before - it was 2009.

Some lines may be able to see some benefit from this. Generally it's the lines that perform at 4Meg or better already, but from all the submitted surveys I think it's a very small minority. We've had more submitted so I need to update the results.

If I remember rightly again, though, yours was one of them - it's one of the shortest and does appear to be copper (it performs at the expected sync rate), so you should see some uplift in your speeds.

(Superfast) broadband is one of the topics in the major village survey that's doing the rounds at the moment - not sure who your deliverer was, my patch didn't extend to where you are, but you should already have one of those now as I think they've all been delivered. Every single household has received one and it covers a wide variety of topics concerning the future of the village.
 
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I see it :) Mind you, it's had one before - it was 2009.

I remember. It "disappeared" though didn't it :).

I think BT are slightly more committed this time:

Faster broadband for another 15,000 Hampshire homes and businesses

Five more county communities set to benefit from roll-out programme;

Nearly nine out of 10 South East premises will have access to new technology within a year

BT today announced plans to make faster broadband available to a further 15,000 homes and businesses in Hampshire.

Cadnam, Fair Oak, Sway, Wallop and Alton Bentley are the latest communities in the county to be included in the roll-out of BT’s next generation broadband service delivered over copper lines. They are due to be upgraded by the Spring of next year.

The BT investment will make available download speeds of up to 20 megabits per second (Mbps) – more than double the speed previously available from BT.

I presume Alton Bentley is us as all the other exchanges listed there have similar RFS dates to Bentley. All the others have later RFS (upgrade) dates than Bentley. So Bentley is first!
 
The exchange is THBT I think - yes, that's the Bentley exchange with its rather sorry list of "Not available" all the way down the right-hand side ;)

The people who live over the road (from the exchange) in the housing "estate" should see some very good speed uplifts (400m long lines!)

I had another look at the surveys submitted, speeds really are all over the place in this village. The shortest line in the entire village (or near as) syncs at 4Mbps tossing FEC errors all over the place. Your line is one of the "top two" in the village.

The most noticeable thing is the really high noise on the lines and there's a pattern of really high noise on the upstream too. But on such lines if ADSL2+ cannot "hold", they can revert back to ADSL2 which should give just a bit more upstream than ADSL1 I think.

If you put your modem statistics into the Kitz ADSL pages, you can get an idea of what your new speed might be:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/max_speed_calc.php

By the way my 3G speeds have dipped down to 4Meg now. I'm thinking this might be congestion and a few people have got themselves 3G modems too :(
 
I had another look at the surveys submitted, speeds really are all over the place in this village. The shortest line in the entire village (or near as) syncs at 4Mbps tossing FEC errors all over the place. Your line is one of the "top two" in the village.

Well, that's good to know! My line is quite variable but I can usually sync between 6816Kbps to about 7424Kbps (on a very good day). The problem I am having currently is that the line drops at night, but I am trying different routers to see which one holds it the best. But yes, I usually get about 5Mbps, the maximum I have ever got is 6.3Mbps but that didn't last long (the connection dropped over night and put me pack down in the 6-6.5Mbps sync speed range).

Is the 4Mbps line with massive FEC errors the other "top" line or is it another?
 
Yours is the "joint top one", I think if I remember rightly at circa 5.8Meg, that's the fastest the village has. Apart from when my 3G hit 11Meg once and delivered 6Meg consistently for nearly a year until someone else got themselves a 3G modem and started using it.

Only 3 lines in the entire village sync at their expected sync rate for the line length - yours and two others. The 4Meg one with all the errors and the ludicrously high noise on the upstream is a fair bit shorter than your line (have to be careful what I write so as not to divulge anything that could specifically identify anyone)

The average sync as a percentage of the theoretical sync is about 55%. The worst is 16% (which is to say that the line syncs at 16% of the rate that it should for its length).
 
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