hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1193.txt

Episode: 1193
Title: HPR1193: Chris Conder Catchup on Broadband for Rural North
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1193/hpr1193.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:24:47

---

Hi, have you got a cup of tea?
I've got a cup of tea in my hand.
While you're reading that, you do know you've been recorded, of course.
I suppose it will be pointless to do in this interview.
Right.
All right, everybody.
My name is Ken Fallon.
And I want to do an interview today, because we're short of shows.
In the actual fact, we have only two people with shows in the queue.
It's 51, 50, and a hookah.
So I really hope you're out there busy recording your shows.
But anyway, back in Episode 900 and AC, we did an interview with somebody
about broadband for the rural north.
And I'll just read what it is.
Located in the very pretty much rural forest of Poland and Lancashire in the UK.
And tired of putting up with their slow broadband, they decided to put together their own network.
They tried sharing Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G mobile networks, MMDS and satellite,
and yet all proved unreliable.
So over a tea and cake, they came up with a plan, a 240 km, 150 mile plan.
I won't gig a bit per second, fiber optic connection plan.
And a plan that will connect everyone of the 1700 homes, farms, schools, churches, businesses in the area.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to bring back to you to Hacker Public Radio, Chris Conner.
Chris, how are you doing?
I'm very, very glad to have you on the line because I've been absolutely plagued with problems all evening.
And it's very likely that this may go in there in the bin.
But tell me, this is the most requested interview I've had on Hacker Public Radio.
People have been bugging me for basically a year.
Yes, a year is it?
Well, however long it has been since our last episode to get a catch-up episode.
And I thought, hey, what a handy thing to do.
So how has things been over there?
Brilliant. Yes, brilliant.
And your idea of the sponsored dunk, it's smashing.
We even got Peter Cochrane. Have you heard of Peter Cochrane?
Yes.
It's a big fiber evangelist used to work for BT and he goes all over the world talking about broadband and advising different governments.
Even he's sponsored me to have had a dunk.
And that's all thanks to your idea on the last Hacker Radio show that we did.
Okay, fantastic.
Yeah.
So how has it been gone? Have you been able, the last time we were talking to you, I think the doctor had been laid and you were just about getting ready to blow some fiber?
How did that go for you?
Yeah, how did the blowing go?
Oh, that was a steep learning curve.
Yeah, we had two blockages and the fiber wouldn't blow through it.
And so the blowing people had to go away.
So we then had to wait for weeks till the blowing people came back.
Because we would do it as a further flow.
And we thought this is ridiculous.
We just have to guess our own blower and learn how to blow properly ourselves.
And so we brought a blower and we've come up with the theory that whenever we're blowing, we have four good strongmen with spades.
And if the blowing stops, we also have a little wheel.
And the blowing machine says, how far the fiber's blown?
100 meters, 200 meters, 500 meters.
And you walk with the wheel to where the fiber stopped.
You dig in and you find out what's the matter with you dumped.
One time it was where it was mull plied in and a stone had moved sideways and crushed the duct.
Oh.
Yeah. And then another time, again, it was a stone.
And it was a piece that I was actually, I actually took a photograph of the blowing that bit of duct.
And I know it was lead, very carefully.
But there obviously missed a stone.
And the ducting was lead on the stone.
And it was backfilled carefully by hand, as we do, for about four to six inches.
And then the diggers back filled the rest of the trench for you.
And so that's how it was done.
And I saw that bit being done.
And like I said, the mister stone, this ducting runner over the top of the stone and when the weight of the whole trench turned down the comet, it bent it over the stone.
And just that little bend was enough to stop the fiber blowing.
So we don't get caught out like that anyway.
Everything that goes wrong is a really good lesson for us.
So we don't sort of mow and grow on about it.
We think great.
Well, we know how to sort that one next time.
And since then we've had the mice. Have you heard the story of the mice?
I've seen the videos. Go ahead and tell us.
Yeah. Well, this farmer said, I've got a hundred meters of duct running through that field and it carries all my electric wires to light up this corner of the field.
Where they have a menace thing for the horses and they exercise the horses in it.
Instead of digging all that way and crossing more electric lines because they have a windmill and water pipes and all sorts of things, let's just shove it through the duct.
So they said, oh great, that's a good idea.
So they did.
And our 16-year-old duct went through his three-inch duct and we thought, job done.
And that was part of the main call route that lit up the second village.
And ten the day we wanted to turn it on, right before Christmas, we wanted to go alive in that village hole before Christmas.
And it wouldn't work.
And we have what's called an R2DR test, which tells you just how far the light's going up your fiber.
And we pulled that in and it said it was three thousand and ten meters or something.
And so we knew that that was fairly close to this farm and a bullet in the access chamber.
So we thought, well, it's probably a few in there that's not been done right or there's a bend or something.
Can you just tell what the bullet is?
The bullet is where the main core duct goes through a hole in the ground with a lid on.
And inside it is a plastic-like container full of little trays.
And the fiber goes into these trays and then customers are joined on with their own fiber because each customer gets their own fiber.
And we thought it's probably a splicing there, but we went and looked and it all looked fine.
And we put a tester on the bullet and tested it back to the village hole.
And it only went h-4 meters.
So we measured that out with our little wheel and low and behold it was right in the middle of this duct.
And we thought, well, we don't bend the duct.
There's nothing wrong with the duct at all.
We thought, what can it be?
And as soon as we saw that his duct was intact, I just knew in the out of arts it was either rats or mice.
Because they're not me at the farm in the silo building chewing through cables.
And so we opened his duct, exposed our duct, and yeah, chewed all the way along the length about 10 meters little holes and big holes.
And in this one particular place it actually chewed through the fiber and snapped the fiber.
They don't chew right through the fiber because as soon as they hit the fiber it makes the gums bleed because it's so sharp, you see.
But the damage was done that brought in the fiber and we couldn't go alive.
And we were absolutely gutted.
And then we thought, well, right, we've got to fix this now.
How are we going to fix it?
And we thought, well, we can get some almond fiber.
And we can put another joining here, which you don't want to all these joints, but I mean needs most.
So we put another joining and replaced a hundred meters of fiber with almond fiber.
And we spoke to lots of different people as to how you start rodents getting in the ducts.
And the answer seemed to be, still wool, because they don't like chewing through still wool.
They'll pull it high, but they won't chew it because that cuts the little gums.
And rodents have to chew to saw down the teeth.
So the rice teeth grow too long.
That's why they chew, not because they're hungry.
And so you put your steel wool in the end of your duct and then you get builders form and squirt that in and that sets hard.
And then the chew through the builders form, hit the wire wall.
That hurts the teeth.
And you start chewing and they leave your ducts alone.
So we've made all this information public.
And every time we do something wrong, we try to make it public.
So that other communities who are doing this sort of stuff don't...
Well, they can learn from our lessons.
And if you're going to use some duct, you've got to make sure both ends are sealed up.
And the little blighters can't get in.
I just want to let the listeners know just for a second that there are loads,
and loads and loads of videos of all this stuff.
A lot of them.
A lot of them.
I've been doing them all today.
If you use advice into that.
I'm actually thrilled every time I see it.
Look, there's somebody else's put their name on it.
It's really cool.
But for our listeners, you mentioned they're not conversation that each customer has their own fiber.
And I know you mentioned that the last time.
But it was only when I saw the videos that I realized that what you're saying is each customer has their own fiber
the whole way from their house right back to the head end.
Is that correct?
Yes.
And then there's a gadget in the hub.
Recall it the hub.
But I think it's proper name is the head end.
I'm not really technical.
But then there's this WDPM or something kit.
Which gives everything a customer that own one gigabits pipe back to peering in Manchester,
which is where our closest peering centre is at New York City in Manchester.
Unbelievable.
So have you connected up any of the customers at all?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And I'm starting to personally connect them up because they discovered that girls' confusion splice.
Especially when the boy's fusion splice is poorly.
And our best fusion splice happens to be poorly.
And we've got fusion splice and it needs to be done.
So I've been doing it.
I've been looking at all the videos.
And you must be spending an amazing amount of time out of the house.
Oh, yes.
I'm full time on this.
Full time volunteer doing this.
Yes.
Totally.
Totally mad.
But you do get these mad people and every community has these people who are just determined to
get on with it and get the job done.
We've got some brilliant people now coming through the ranks.
So you get your average volunteers who are happy to do the Saturdays.
But they work all week.
And then you've got volunteers who use the days off to come and help you.
And then you've got some that are really, really good at certain things.
And so they end up being in charge of it.
Yeah.
We've got a brilliant blowing man.
And he's a shepherd actually.
And so he's quite busy at the moment, landing sheep.
But he's shown quite a few of the other villages how to do it.
So we can still keep blowing customers till he's finished landing.
So good organizers as well.
Yeah.
We've got some really good organizers coming through the ranks.
And logistics are half the trouble, getting stuff to people and the need them.
And these people are organizing it and they're self-organizing.
They only have to, you know, they're quite, well, they're all bright people.
And they know what needs to be done.
And they just get on with it.
Once you've shown them what and so possibly twice, they just get on with it and they do it.
You can see it has to be done and nobody else is going to do it for them.
The lonely skills and then when we can afford to pay them.
And when we've got proper jobs to offer people, they will get those jobs.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And it's, I'll tell you, it's not an unuseful thing to be able to blow fiber or spice fiber or something.
It is not.
When, if I wanted a fusion spice, I have to pay 300 pounds a day for a good fusion splicer.
The cheapest one I've found is 120 pounds a day.
But we've got a very good fusion spice in turn incentive just over the border in Cumbria.
It's called Lucid.
And they're turn fusion splicers.
And what we find is these people want some experience.
And so when we get a good one, a good, a good lad coming through.
The training, they say to him, if you want to make experience, go and help barn for a few days.
And they'll put you a video up and things like that.
And you'll get the experience to put on your CV.
You won't get any money because they're not paying anybody.
And these labs volunteer to come and help.
We've had a couple of really good ones from Lucid.
Because Lucid is a really good trainer.
It's a long course, a city and girls course.
But because they're like in the same position as those, they're in a very rural area.
And they're building that own fiber network too, called fiber garden.
And I've seen that on Twitter and on the web.
They're really on our side.
And so they're turned three of us.
Just a fusion splice, not the full training course.
Because of course we can't afford to purchase a full training course.
But enough to be able to operate a fusion splice.
And then the three of us that went, we have then turned to more people to use fusion splice.
And just tonight on the way home, I had to step and pick up some pig tails.
And the lady at the house gave me the pig tails.
And she said, I've been thinking about it, Christine.
And I think all the ladies of the village should learn fusion splice.
So this is the WRI.
Women's Institute.
That's the ladies organization.
Yeah.
And she said, I'm sure we're all very dexterous with our fingers.
We've been knitting in the flower range and everything else.
Can we all learn fusion splice?
And I thought, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, why not?
We'll have the wild engines fusion splice.
Now, a few things we need to clear up for our listeners.
Fusion splice is a way to join fiber ends together on guessing.
Yes.
Yes.
All you do is you have these two little tiny refibres that are only the thickness of a hair.
And you've got to strip the outer coat enough with a special little tool, strip the plastic coat enough.
So all you've got is a very, very fine strand of glass.
And you put the two fine strands of glass into the fusion splice in the machine, as if you've cleaned it.
And turn the ends.
And the fusion splice in the machine fuses those two ends together.
So it's an unbroken piece of glass.
And that's all fusion splice in it.
Each customer needs six splices because they have two fibers into the house.
And then it goes into the hole in the ground somewhere outside the house into this bullet thing.
And then the fiber goes right the way back to our cabin up.
And there's two fusion splices in there to do.
So you have six slices to do per customer.
So why is there two fibers to every customer?
Because what we think is, you know, some television companies might not want to be on your broadband.
They might want their own fiber to deliver, you know, television in the future.
They might, I don't know, but also one of the main things we're thinking of is healthcare.
And with healthcare, the healthcare professionals don't really like to be on an ordinary open network.
I think they would want their own personal fiber to their home for the care of the elderly in their own homes.
But you don't know what's in the future.
And if you put in a fiber, you might as well put a spray in it.
Absolutely.
That's what we thought.
It doesn't cost us any more, does it?
No, it doesn't.
And you could also, I'm guessing if a company was listening to this and decided to, you know, base up there,
they could run, use both of those fibers with colored glass and then, you know, could have 200.
If there is a company here that really wanted something super duper, we do provide a 10 gig service.
I mean, I don't think anybody wants it in a rush.
But if a dear presenter wants it to come in and establish itself in our valley, they could have his own 10 gig feed.
Or it could have too much, wouldn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, 20 gig, huh?
And you mentioned pigtails, what are they?
The pigtails are the little bits of fiber with a specialist end already made on them.
And they're what plug into all this fancy equipment that runs the network.
There's a fancy bit in your house called a CPE client premise equipment which is a little box on the wall.
And that has a pigtail in it joined onto your fiber.
And then when you get back to the cabinet, there's another pigtail which plugs into these fancy routers with flashing lights
and that dissolve fancy things and makes you there to fly to gig.
And tell me this, and a lot of people listening to this will have, you know, we have a lot of people who work in data centers and stuff.
So fiber is no big, strange thing to us.
But I was fascinated to see the logistics of what you needed to do to get it into the ground and to build a network.
This is just something that we never, never see, hence, I guess, the amount of interest people have had in this episode and in your project in general.
Has anybody else, I know you mentioned, somebody fiber gardens across the valley.
Has anybody else come and been inspired or, you know, taken any of the lessons that you've learned to income with them?
Yeah, there's quite a few community groups being to visitors.
We don't have a trip at a spare time to give to people.
And we've had far more enquiries than we can deal with.
And a lot of them are very early stage enquiries.
So there's a lot of hand-holding to do with people who are just thinking, what can we do to get some broadband into our area.
It's really hard that there's another group started it up that knows a lot about all the groups who are trying to do things.
And they're trying to pull together, sort of, a database of helpers, like a mentor group.
And so I tend to feel a lot of enquiries off to them because they're really good at succing out what it is community.
It's like, it's up for geographic austerity, whether there's a fiber near them, but they can join to, you know, a dark fiber to lease.
Like, we will look at, because we can lease this dark fiber into our villages at each end of the network.
But we've had dual feed in, so it's got this resilience, you know, I think they call it redundancy, whatever.
But all that sort of fact-finding, we haven't tried to help communities with that.
But there are an awful lot of communities, and I think they're doing it for themselves.
Because they realize, you know, they're still going to be left behind if we don't do something themselves.
So, if there was a project, for instance, there was a guy and his brother who wanted to go over and volunteer for a week.
Would you be open to that sort of thing?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anybody who wants to come and volunteer, Martin Malcolm.
Martin Malcolm.
What would you expect of these hypothetical volunteers?
I often.
How many people have laid that?
What would we expect?
Just to muck in, really.
Just to muck in.
I mean, if they could bring any skills, that would be great, if you could use your spice or anything.
But it's really, there's so much digging going on in different places.
It's laying out the duct, so you lay the duct tape before the digger gets there.
The digger does the bulk of the work, and some of these digger drivers are just like ballerinas.
They can just, you know, they're beautiful when you watch the good digger drivers work in.
And then you have to lay the duct in the bottom of the trench, making sure it's very level.
And you're not to let it wiggle from side to side, you keep it very straight.
And then make sure there's no storms around it.
And you just backfill with the spade.
I tend to just bash the sides a bit and knock soft dust down.
Yeah.
And just bed the duct in there nice and firmly with a nice covering on it.
And then the digger can backfill it.
Perfect.
And tip all the stuff on.
There's been, there you do, as I said before, you have loads of videos on them that is really incredibly addictive viewing.
It has to be said it's, if you're any way interested in this at all, have a look at all the videos.
Just before we go, how many homes have you connected up now?
We connected the first batches.
I think it was nine in Cuorma, which is one end of the dig in October.
And since then the rest of Cuorma, it's not a big finish, it's only about 40 houses altogether.
I think in Cuorma, I can't remember actually.
Most of the doors are on.
And we were going to have a search for a big splash, oh yes, a life.
Here's a gig of everything in October.
And then another village said, we want to get going.
And we got sidetracked helping them.
And what this village was, it's a village that has broadband, but it's all very slow.
And all the people who have it are always mourning about it, because they're quite a long way from the exchange.
And two people in the village said, when are you going to bring it to us?
And we said, well, we're not, you are when you're ready.
And you said, well, what do we have to do?
And we said, well, we're going to connect you to the geo.fiber, which is three and a half kilometers from your village.
And so you have to root workers, get permission off all the farmers on that route,
and ask the farmers to dig that bit, or get somebody to dig that bit for the farmers,
and get the duckling down to your village, and then we can start to connect the villagers.
And they said, well, all the farmers whose land it is, when they walk the roots, find that there were absentee landlords,
so there were landowners that didn't actually live in the village, so they had nothing to gain by getting a connection,
because there were no houses there.
And so the villagers said, well, we've already bought shares in barn.
If we buy some more, could we pay the diggers with those shares?
So we'll pay the diggers and take the money in shares, because we pay 1.50 a meter for the farmer to dig the land.
And then a lot of the farmers are doing that, because these farmers don't live there.
So we thought, well, that's another idea.
So they hired some diggers, and they had to go over three and a half kilometers in, and they got paid 1.50 a meter,
and then they paid in shares, and then they paid cash to dig them.
But those trenches are now on absentee landlords' land, so how does that work?
Well, the landlords gave where they need, so they didn't mind the fire going through.
They just didn't want to dig it themselves and get shares, because the farmers are just...
You know, old ladies actually, this is the old ladies on the land, and they just rent it out, you see.
And so...
I don't know, that worked very well. That got it to the village.
All the villages saw these diggers in the fields and came to see what was going on.
A lot of them came to help, mostly retired people, and the early retired or fully retired people, ladies as well.
And one day we had three doctors actually working in the trenches, just as laborers,
and they got really interested in it.
And the first question they asked you when you're in the trench working with them is,
I live over there. How do I guess it to my house?
And when you explain, well, we've got to get down to there, and then we come across there,
and then we can dig one to your house, and they get really into it, and they dig into their house,
quite often through the garden with spurs, and then the neighbor says, well, you've got it.
Oh, do I guess it? And so they tell them, and they go and help them.
And this is how it goes, and then the next door neighbor can't dig, because they're in invalid.
So they go and dig theirs as well.
And they form these working groups.
And like I said, the organizers come through who ordered a duck to make sure there's enough duck to, you know,
make sure the roots in the right place, make sure the maps are right,
and they just connected nearly every house in the village.
They've got eight fun take-up.
I seriously don't know why this is in the movie, you know.
I've been talking to it, and if it is made into movie, I want Julie Walters to be me,
because I think it's the closest thing to me, is a comedian.
We have all the ingredients now.
The women's institute getting involved, so we've got it.
Yeah, that's awesome.
You meet some sort of digger guy from, you know, technic from the city.
You can just see it now.
Listen, the last time we spoke, and I've been very interested in wondering about this,
has it happened?
You were saying that one person objected before, and you were going to re-root around their house.
We do, yes.
We still haven't connected that village anyway.
But we've got another route, and we don't have to go through his land.
We've had another one since, just one.
And that's, it's one house in the village we're working in now,
and it's just one little bit of a field that he owns.
And that, one little bit, it's only a hundred meters.
If we could go over that hundred meters, that would serve us thousands of pounds
to get to a school and five houses.
And we will get to the school and five houses.
Obviously, yes, for sure.
But it will cost us a lot of money to go round, rather than going across this little bit of a field.
And he's just insistent, he doesn't want to go in on this field.
And he's quite happy with his 3G dongle.
So, what can you do?
You know, you just have to go around them.
You do get on people like that, and it can't be helped.
And you can't hold it against them.
They're entitled not to love you on the field, if they don't want you.
But it's very frustrating when you find out something like that.
And you sort of see if they're a bit of want to go around and show to them.
But you don't.
And you just settle and then you think, oh well, we'll move on.
There's going to be one, isn't there?
But it's not everybody.
Yeah, it's not like as if it's, you know, there's any health concerns.
I mean, it's a flash in life.
You know, there's no...
Yeah, there's absolutely no reason for it.
Some people are just obstinate.
And this particular person is convinced that BT is going to bring in super fast broadband
because they've told him so.
And they're always telling you to tell you on the television, to tell you on adverts, to tell you on circulars.
Everybody's going to get super fast broadband from BT.
And a lot of people will get super fast, but not our villages.
That's why we're doing this.
But they're super fast, isn't it going to be ever as fast as yours?
Super fast because yours is actually...
No, no.
And ours is going to be so much cheaper as well because it's our own network and we're peering.
So we don't have to pay the middleman with, you know, we're completely...
Well, with the two middlemen, we don't have to pay wholesale or open range.
You know, we just strike free to peering.
And we can go as fast as we want whenever we want.
Trouble is, we can't really use a gig at the moment because our computers aren't good enough.
Wow.
And we can't even measure a gig actually.
It's really, really hard to measure a gig because nobody can serve you a gig.
I can actually hear the listeners to this podcast going, oh my god, let me open there.
I'll get up to a gig.
Well, with one geeky guy, he brought his laptop when we had the BBC over last week.
And this geeky guy brought his brand new Windows 8 laptop with no virus protection, no firewalls, no rubbish on it.
And he just plugs straight into the ethernet.
And he got 940, I think, with his best score from a server in Amsterdam.
Oh, no, it wasn't. It was a server in Manchester.
Yeah.
That was his best score.
Have you had any interest in people setting up a little data center or something in a shed somewhere there?
Not yet. I'm hoping that'll come, maybe it'll come from this podcast, like the sponsored.com from the last one.
Yeah.
The data center would be great.
It doesn't take much actually.
And looking at the weather over there, you wouldn't have to pay for cooling that much either.
No, you wouldn't. That's the fact. That's the fact.
The first day I've been working with, don't be caught on.
It's been beautiful here today. I think this is our summer, February.
This will be our summer. It was last year. We had February and March, we're okay.
And then it rained every day since.
Yeah, and it looks like it really, really looks miserable in some of the shots that has to be said.
Yeah.
Okay, Chris.
Hold in the tent, hold in the tent, then.
And we've wrecked our tent, now the wind has just wrecked it.
And so now we've got scaffolding poles, so in my little van I've got four scaffolding poles.
And we take those down to the holes in the ground where we're working.
And we jump on them so they stick in the ground.
And then we throw a tattling off and climb into them and fuse in those.
You can't fuse when it's windy, you see?
Exactly.
It's got to be very clean and no wind and no muck blowing in.
So we have that now.
For the people listening, what you'll see is that the fiber can only go so far within the ducts
and then you blow it through.
And then you come to a particular house where you split off some of the fiber's goals
continues on to the other houses.
And some of the fiber's split off for a particular area.
And you see the land is completely mucky, as it would be because it's January, February, you know?
But it's been like that all summer.
Yeah.
We've had to dam the trenches.
So we put a dam in the trench to catch the water, then the dig it can carry on digging.
And we make the water run off down the field.
And drain it off as best we can and then back fill the trenches.
But the trenches can often fill up with water faster than you can dig the mountain.
Because the ground is so wet.
So we can't use the little diggers that the farmers were going to dig with.
Most farmers have a little digger on the back of the tractor or a little digger.
But you can't go on the land with those.
And so we've had to bring in the big diggers.
I'm actually paying the big diggers.
And this is where the share ideas come in, where the people pay the diggers.
And then take the wages that the diggers would have had in shares.
Because of course the digger men can't afford to work shares as families and mortgages.
And so whereas the farmers could have done a hundred meters today and a hundred meters next week and just got their dig done.
That's not work.
It's not work that way.
That was our plan, but it didn't work.
And so the community themselves came up with the solution, which was,
well, we'll pay the digger men and we'll take the 1.50 meter in shares.
And some have made a profit on it.
They've got more shares.
And then it costs them the actual Arkham digger, three and a half kilometers,
which would have been three and a half, 1.50 meters.
What's that?
I can't work it out.
But the actual digger only costs 4,430.
Yeah.
You know, that's how things work.
And there's savvy enough to work these things out for themselves.
And they also know they get 30% tax back when they buy the shares.
So if you buy a thousand pounds of shares, you get 300 pounds back off the government straight away as cash.
So that's like 10% to your interest for you, isn't it?
Yeah.
You can check that out there.
So they work that out as well.
So the best-led plans and all that is all changed because the community actually come up with ideas themselves
to get around all these issues.
Well, I'm also...
And you see that in the videos as well as you're taking out the fiber.
What do you call that?
We've been the figure of a thing.
You see that?
Oh, when you're fleeting it.
Yeah.
When you're fleeting it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was one of our retired ladies, fleeting the fiber.
Yeah, fleeting the fiber.
She sat down and did it.
She sat down on the carpet and I've fleeted the fiber for her.
Yes.
The two big flower pots hold the figure of a...
Yeah, well, we couldn't keep the figure of eight neat in this fellow.
I said, oh, I'll put you these flower pots over.
But since then, our woodworking man, we've got this woodworking man, Carpenter.
And he's fitted our trailer right with these great shelves that hold everything in a drop-down table.
And he's made his bullet holders out of wood.
And so instead of having to pay $100 pounds for a metal bullet holder,
he's made of some wooden ones.
And there's some pictures of them burning through it.
They look like toilet seats, actually.
But they hold the bullets firmly while you're working in them.
And he's made as a fleeting board.
So this board, it just holds the middle of the figure of eight floors on the tarflin.
Because some of the blows, you can't blow...
I think that our next blow to our bestead is seven kilometers.
But we can't blow that holy mongol.
So we'll have to keep breaking out of these access chambers and fleeting it.
So you'll blow...
You do a hundred meters or so on then?
You'll blow...
Well, our access chambers are over 500 meters.
Okay, yeah.
So we'll probably be able...
If we're lucky, we'll blow to the second one, a thousand meters.
If we're not lucky, we'll just get to the 500 meters one and blow six and a half kilometers through.
And all that will have to be fleeted.
So you do six and a half kilometers in the first one, five and more together?
Well, we've never done...
I think what we'll do, we've got a three and a half kilometers of blow up from our comb.
I think we'll attempt not first and see how far we can get.
Before we attempt the big blow, and we might have to have a join in the middle.
So instead of trying to blow seven kilometers, we'll try and blow three.
Okay.
And then join it in the middle.
It's only, you know, 144 splices online.
But, you know, the fewer joins you have, the better.
So we'll fleet as much as we can.
But when you've fleeted, you've got to have enough men there to turn your bundle over.
Yeah.
Because you blow it from the other side, you see.
Yeah, and it's the seven, you know, five...
Five kilometers of cable turning that over.
That's a lot of...
It will be a lot.
It will be an awful lot.
Yeah.
We'll probably do it into girls.
I don't know how we'll do that.
We'll think something when it's time comes.
Yeah.
It's all dug in right now.
It's actually ready to blow is that one.
But they haven't got it into the cabinet yet.
They're about, I think, five meters short of the cabinet now.
They've got it to the school and then they've got to cross the road and then into the cabinet.
So the bulk of the dig is done now to the very end of our network, which is Happy Stead.
But then the branching off in other directions now, because other villages say,
well, how much will it cost for you to come to us?
And we say, well, we'll get to you eventually, right?
But if you want it now, it will cost you extra amount of times.
So they'll just go around and get shareholders to coffee too.
And they get the fill.
Where do you go?
And then they start digging and that surprised us as well, you know,
because we were focusing on the really desperate people.
But these are people that we didn't think were that desperate.
But they must be, because they're doing it.
Yeah, but the...
I'll tell you, Chris, if I had the choice here, right?
And, you know, I've got 40 megabits available to me.
I would still like to have a gigabit.
Yeah.
And I didn't.
I was to God, I would dig.
I'd be on that digger.
I'd be down in the trench.
Yeah.
That's what the doing, that is just what the doing.
They're just getting on with it.
And we had a business park came to us and they said, you know,
I know we're way off your radar at the moment,
but would you consider coming to us when we said yes?
And they said, would we be able to buy the feed off here
and feed our village ourselves in our own, you know, ISP?
And we said, yeah, of course.
You know, we're open access.
Anybody can.
And we've got three, four Wi-Fi networks
and I want them to buy a feed off of which we're going to supply.
And we're feeding my network, my network is Webnet,
which is a, we're waiting for fiber, you know.
We are going to dig, but we've still got a wireless network.
It's very good.
So we don't have to rush to get ourselves on until we've got everybody else on.
And so we've put the barn feed into the one-net network now.
So we're paying the same for, it's a gigabit feed,
because you can't do a gigabit through wireless,
but we're getting about 40 megs of electrical.
Quite nicely through fairly cheap equipment, fairly cheap equipment.
It's only about 100 pound of house, the equipment we use.
And it's been in, you know, we're not just putting it in, it's been in a bit.
So we just coupled our feed into that,
put another transmitter up.
And we're getting 40 megs of electrical for the same price.
We're paying the cane to currency for two megs.
At five to one, contended.
And we're getting a pure gigabit.
We had the best of transmissor, we'd have a gigabit.
Tell me, have you done anything with wireless or GSM,
that sort of thing, sorry, regular mobile for G?
We've now for G in this area with very, very limited 3G,
apart from the one man who can actually get it,
and doesn't want us going through field.
Most of us can't get it in our phones,
but we can get it in the Wi-Fi and the YB,
with the best of transmissors we can pick up in quite a few.
Yeah, yeah.
But there's only one mask in the area for 3G.
And unless you've got a fairly good minus eye to it,
you haven't much chance.
And most villages in the bottom of Thales,
you know, where the rivers are,
and so most of the villages can't get it,
but quite a few,
well, quite a few people could get it if they got a Wi-Fi,
which is not very good,
and in a lot of the area,
you can't even get the 2G, you can't get any mobile,
at all, in some areas.
Have any of those companies expressed an interest
in getting the back hole from you guys?
No, yes.
You probably don't know.
We exist.
I just see one of the videos.
There was a BT engineer out there saying
that it was a great idea of what you were doing.
Yes, but then he said that he couldn't,
with the best will in the world,
BT could never help us.
He did say that on the one show.
Yeah.
And why doesn't this guy with the 100-meter thing,
I mean, even more,
as you say, or something?
Yeah, yeah.
What we've said,
what we've said is a committee.
We had to have a vote on it actually.
Half of us said,
anybody who won't like us on their land
and doesn't want a connection
will never ever get a connection.
Half of us agreed to that.
And the other half said,
that's not really fair,
because these children might want a connection,
or they might sell the house,
and the people who buy it might want a connection.
So they said, right, well, fair enough,
if that happens,
there has been change in mind,
we can't have the connection,
but it will cost them,
whatever it costs us to go around,
to go around them,
because this is our money,
this is our shareholder's money,
we're having to spend now,
to go around this person.
And it's only fair that that money is put back
into the part to help pay back our shareholder's,
is that person,
besides he do want a connection after all.
And we brought you down it,
and that's what the committee decided,
and it will take the whole of the shareholder's
to change that now,
to public vote,
but that's what we've decided.
That's what would be an interesting thing to communicate
to any potential buyers of a property in the area.
Well, actually,
you've got to do a search,
if you're buying a property,
and it's up to the estate agents and the lawyers
to do a proper search on your property,
and if your property hasn't got the broadband,
every other property in the street has,
it's up to them to find out why.
And it will be,
they'll have to come to that and say,
how much will it cost for this property to have a connection,
and we will look up our records,
and we will say,
because there's £20,000 to go around that house,
and so that house will cost £20,000.
If it's somebody who just didn't want a connection,
that's fine.
It will cost them £150.
That's today's price.
I mean, it might go up in the future.
It's today's price,
because it's all being built by volunteers.
And we have to keep it a reasonable price.
And if you're putting, like tonight,
we've just put eight houses on a bullet,
and if we had to go back and visit that chamber,
just for one house,
we'd probably have to charge more,
I don't know, in the future.
But at the moment,
it's £150 for a connection.
And those eight houses tonight have one gigabit ethernet.
Well, no, because that was just a bullet.
The houses themselves are fused.
The bullet is now in place and done.
And then tomorrow, we're doing the cabinet.
And if those eight houses are on the list in the cabinet,
and if it gets done tomorrow,
yes, they will go live tomorrow.
But, you know,
if something goes on tomorrow and those days don't do them,
because it's just me and another volunteer tomorrow,
using in the cabinet.
So that's...
Until our fusions buy some hands better.
Okay, and if there were listeners
from Hacker Public Radio in the UK
and had some of these skills,
they'll have your email address.
It's just anything that's banned before our end,
the org.uk,
and it will come into the system
and we'll pick them up if they want to come and help,
or come and visit.
We'll find in the holiday cottages
they're getting booked up very fast.
Yeah, I'm not surprised.
I mean, the holiday cottages
are connected to the network.
We've got two in Quarmer connected to the network,
and we've got two in a bed and breakfast in our home connected
to the network.
And we've got another...
We've got another five on last week in our home.
And then there's another search,
two, due to go live,
as soon as we get the cabinet work done.
And there's another...
I think another 40,
still to get the equipment screwed on in the houses.
And the guys tend to go around
and do a few of those every day,
especially on wet days,
that's where you'll find them in houses.
Yeah, and they've been rolling out
a whole lot of ducts today
for another row of houses in our home.
So that village is almost done.
They've done a sterling work.
I can't get over how the community is pulled together.
When you go around talking to them
and they say, you know,
I didn't know this chap.
And I've lived here for 20 years.
It isn't too wonderful.
And, you know,
they're all meeting up with each other now.
And it's just amazing occasion it builds.
Of course not.
Most people must be brought to work all day.
And then they're catching up with the housework
and they're shopping and cleaning
and ironing and everything.
And they don't make fighties to do.
So you can live in a street
and not know you're there, but very well.
And they're all looking in together
and getting to know each other
and going down to each other's houses
and not dreaming.
Of course not.
Right, the older is.
Now that you're giving them internet
they'll never have to leave their house again.
Well, you know, everybody says,
oh, you get out in front of a computer
and you're anti-social
and you just sit there all the time.
But actually getting this connection
has made people leave the computers
and mix and do things
and help each other.
You know, they're helping each other.
It's the amazing thing.
There's one way,
if she was actually on the BBC report last week
and she's going to help mastermind our help desk
because we don't want to farm it out.
We want everybody to help each other.
But somebody has to sort of be a central point
and organize it a bit.
And she's offered to do it
because she's a retired IT person
and she's a farm's wife
and the old Noah and Truster.
And she's got two queries this week.
How do you get your one-a-do email
when you're not on one-a-do anymore?
Good question.
Well, we say,
I mean, we'll do a mail server of our own one day,
just like we'll do our own VoIP one day
and when we've got the network built
but we just say,
we'll just get a Gmail address
and they say,
well, what Gmail, you know,
and what we do is we get a Gmail address
and then if you want to be posh,
you can buy a domain name
for 99 a year, isn't it?
For a nice domain name.
And then you get Gmail to pretend
it's sending from that.
And it's quite easy to set it up
and Miss Lady knows how to do it.
And so she's going around showing people how to do it
and then they're supposed to show some deals
how to do it,
whether it works that way, I don't know.
But we at Barn,
we have a Gmail address
and it's,
before we're on North at Gmail.com
but we tell it to use Barn.org.uk
not so we do it.
So they can all do the same.
So instead of this man who,
who emailed the other day,
he said,
he has his business name,
like Fred's Payers or something,
asked oneadoo.co.uk
and said,
well, he's not really a good business name,
at oneadoo.co.uk
and why don't you have
info at Fred'sPayers.co.uk
as long as you're five every year,
get a Gmail address
and find it through that.
And then you've got a posh domain
and you also get three websites
if you want it,
three photos,
storage,
you know,
free everything with Google.
So,
and the same with Year 5,
you know,
we are going to do our own
asterisk server on there
when somebody rises through the ranks
who wants to do it
and there's one or two looking,
you know, share play.
But we're saying,
you can try Vonage,
nothing long with Vonage,
because you're paying
it for a little after
to plug it into our equipment.
And you've got your phone line then,
you can,
you don't have to pay
15 pounds a month to be two then,
and you can have
you keep the same number,
and you can have calls
diversity to your mobile,
and loads of free services with it.
And,
a limited free call for,
I think it's 599 a month,
and there's loads of companies
like Vonage,
you know, Vonage is just one,
just like Gmail,
just one email service.
Yeah.
I'm talking about Mailer.
Yeah, who Mailer?
Any Mail?
Well, there's, I see,
I see in my future,
like a barn up there,
in barn.
You know, just housing
a few servers,
and a few local guys
running Linux services
off it for the community.
I mean,
there's a business there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And not only for the community,
but also anywhere,
because, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So limited,
what's possible,
what's possible in the future
is unlimited?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Very, very impressed
with what you're doing.
And again,
it's been one of the most requested
follow-ups that we've ever had
here in HBO.
So,
Well, everybody wants to come here
for the holidays and see it.
Yes.
Yes.
To do, I've,
I've actually,
I'm trying to get a gig on a speed test
if you can.
Hi.
Don't worry, I can.
I won't be using a Windows 8 machine
to do it either.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes, yes.
I will be able to reach that speed.
Chris, listen,
thanks very much for taking the time again.
Oh, it's a pleasure.
Any time.
We wish you all the absolute best.
Okay.
Right.
It goes a bit to Sunday night.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm going to have to come over
and visit first.
Yeah.
I know from this last year.
All right, Chris.
Thanks very much for the time.
It's a pleasure.
All right.
Cheerio.
Okay.
Bye.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.