Creating a telecom company?

Tourm · 8 Oct 2010 at 13:48

Having moved from inner city Leeds to the rural countryside for a better way of life, I found the transition from a decent 10mb to my current 0.5mb connection, something which I'm still coming to terms with.

So, daydreaming on the train the other day about a £120 euromillions win and reading about how Rutland Telecom came to be - How could I create the fastest connected village in the UK with crazy speeds, and start expanding from there?

What about connecting my superfast network to the internet? Would I still be relient on having to connect to BT's exchanges or could this bypassed altogether?

Roland0 · 8 Oct 2010 at 13:51

I would say it's a very good idea, well worth doing, i think they only needed £30k to start up, which is easily affordable if you have enough people.

kerrgreg · 8 Oct 2010 at 14:09

As for connecting your network to the internet you could do this a number of ways;

Lease line
Satellite
Bonded Lines
Possibly be your own LLU at the exchange, then run fibre to it?

Azuse05 · 8 Oct 2010 at 14:10

there are various grants/funds around for such villages. Most of the small ones in wales are being funded by the welsh assembly pot while the shetlands are being funded by the EU pot. Sadly this also means you'll have better broadband on our remote northern islands than you will in any of our cities. Funny old world isn't it

wij · 8 Oct 2010 at 15:35

I've been looking at ways to improve the connectivity where my parents live for some time now, unfortunately most solutions just don't make any economical sense - too low population in the village and a lack of community interest it seems.

This is despite the fact that when we went door to door everyone we spoke to was annoyed at the speed of their ADSL connection (avg. sync rate in the village is <1Mbit/sec) so I'd say the biggest obstacle is getting people to put their money where their mouth is and appreciate that if they live outside the bigger towns and cities that these services will cost them a few quid a month more.

Just some ideas of the numbers involved:

100Mbit fibre to central location is circa £22k a year, initial engineering costs varied from £20-40k though on a 3/5yr contract we could write these off.

PTP Microwave link from tower near the exchange (tower already in place and has NLoS to village) would run about £20k for the kit + some transit to go on the end of it...

Mesh based Wifi distribution network would run to about £1800 a node, probably need 4-6 nodes to get things going and provide adequate coverage.

5Ghz CPE was about £150 a go.

It might be worth giving http://www.vtessebroadband.co.uk/ a look / call as if you can get enough interest they will look at running a FTTC service around the village for you.

reilly · 8 Oct 2010 at 16:05

I used to live in the city centre with friends where we had virgin 20mb internet it was great. I then moved home to my parents which is in the middle of no-where, so you could say I'm in the same boat as we can only getting 0.5mb 'down the line' with a download speed of 56kbs. We online have a phone line, no cable in the area. The best solution I found to increase the speed was to look at wireless broadband dongles. The best I found was with 3, 15gb download limit for £15 a month. This was at the speed of 1.5mb. It isn't implementing the whoel villiage like it stated in your question but it is better than nothing.

PistolPete · 8 Oct 2010 at 16:46

Tourm said:
What about connecting my superfast network to the internet? Would I still be relient on having to connect to BT's exchanges or could this bypassed altogether?

Find the nearest POP and connect to that. Ideally you'd want more than 1 link per POP and multiple POPs but as you would have won the lottery the cost isn't quite as scary.

dave-lew99 · 8 Oct 2010 at 18:28

If it's really rural you may be able to do some good negotiation with farmers and the like to run a fibre from a nearby town in shallow trenches, hell tacked to fences would be possible - although obviously would be a prime target for damage (accidental or otherwise)

Then distribute throughout the town using a wireless type system, eg Alvarion point to multipoint BreezeAccess kit.

On the other hand, most people move to the country to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life and you could just live with it...