Episode: 980
Title: HPR0980: Broadband for Rural North
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0980/hpr0980.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 16:56:24

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And how are you?
Hello everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and today we have a special episode. We're talking
about a project that's very close to my heart and we're talking to Chris Konder and Chris
can you tell us what your project is? Our project is Broadband for the Rural North which is
B4RN, we call it BAM and it's a project to bring a really good internet connection to a very
rural area in the uplands of Lancashire. Okay and the website is B, the digital or the
numeral 4 or 4omln for November.org.uk. Now I just opened up Lancashire here on Google Maps
and I see a lot of roads down the south, where would you be more or less? We're at the very top
corner of Lancashire, we're just on the border of Yorkshire and Cumbria. There doesn't seem to be
a lot of roads up there. There aren't a lot of roads now and we're working mainly in the like I
say the upland areas where all the sheep farmers are. So with a lot of family farms up there and
they're very sort of spread about. People have lived there for generations, I mean my husband's
family has been here for four generations and his family have actually found in the Loon Valley
since 1426. So people are really heathed here, they don't want to move if they live on a farm,
they want to stay living and working on a farm and the only way you can do it these days is if
you've got an internet connection because you have to do your vat online, you have to do all your
deaf stuff online. You know you just have to be online these days and so we've done various
things, we've used satellites, we've used 3G because even though we can't get you to our
farms you can buy gadgets that will bring 3G to you but when the cells get full they don't
work very well. We've found with the satellites they work out too expensive because if the kids
come home from school and it's turned on they can use up your full days data transfer allowance
and then when you come in to do your work at night you're throttled down because it's all
used up and if you want it to go faster again you've got to sort of put my money in the slot
and if the kids get your credit card password and authenticate it to soup it up again
you can run up bills of thousands of pounds if you're not careful so what we're finding is the
farmers are turning the satellites off in the day time so we've also built a community mesh network
and we feed an area around me with Wi-Fi which is how I'm online at the moment and it's been a really
interesting project we've been doing it since 2005 but we can't get enough backhaul to keep us
all happy and so we have to tell people not to use video in the day time so the businesses can
carry on working and for instance if all the kids came on now and all went on YouTube this
conversation would drop off because the network just couldn't cope with it so it served its purpose
but it's times come now and we're moving on to fiber so it's the only way to do it properly
so no doubts BT will be running off loads of trucks up there to help you out with this
I wish no BT any telecommunications company big company isn't interested at all in people like
us we're a minority we're very expensive to service with new infrastructure and they want to
make the most of the infrastructure they already have which is the copper telephone network
and so they can suit that up to some degree in urban areas where there are a lot of people
by putting a cabinet in and so that's what they're doing they're giving the people who already
have broadband faster broadband and for a while they'll be quite happy with that but then they'll
realise that it's not really that fast and they'll need more and then they'll have to fiber up the
cities but even when you do that they still won't do anything for us because they've
enough on the plates dealing with the majority the minority really do have to sort of look after
themselves okay so what's the plan the plan is well we started off we had to find out if the people
wanted this and we've prepared to work for it because it's because sorry could you tell me what
this is no exactly what's broadband internet access yes the description yeah that's affordable
and is useful and they can get broadband themselves by buying a satellite if they want
or using 3g or trying to get a Wi-Fi connection beamed up from somebody else who has it
but we wanted to know if the people wanted proper broadband owned by themselves owned by the people
and future proof so that it was built so that it would do the job once and do it properly
rather than a sort of stock up solution and so first thing we did we did sort of a mail shot
to everybody a flyer printed flyer and there's a local initiative here called Area of Natural Beauty
it's run by the council and they keep the countryside looking nice you know the pad to do this work
like countryside ranges I suppose you could call and they have funding to help community
projects get started I mean they wouldn't fund the broadband but they'd help you to get it started
and they'll give you money to put an advert in the paper and print flyers and things like that
and so they gave us a grant to get these flyers printed and we delivered them to every single house
in our parishes and there's eight parishes joined together for this project because we need
quantity if we're going to build a network there's got to be enough people on it to make it sustainable
otherwise we're wasting our time so we got we designed these flyers ourselves and got them printed
and and the volunteers because we volunteers in every parish they delivered them host to host so
everybody got one I would imagine at least 50% just went in the bin without even being read
but with this theory that you've got to tell people seven times or they've got to see your logo seven
times before they actually start to think about what you're trying to tell them and so there was the
local newspaper adverts and the flyers and parish meetings and posters and stickers in cars
because we made those ourselves we just printed them and laminated them and put little sticky tabs
on and got them into people's cars and in the windows of the houses and we made little signs
with lollipop sticks and stuck them at roundabout the place so just to just to raise awareness that
we existed and then people would say what's all this band stuff that I keep saying seeing um
anyway so the theory was that we we had to know if there were enough people who wanted a good
broadband service and we put a beanstalk on the website and we said there's 1500 houses in
these parishes and if we get to the sort of the halfway mark then that means we'll if we build
this network we can run it and afford to run it and so if we get half of you to register an interest
then we'll go ahead and we couldn't do that until until we have we couldn't start spending money
that we hadn't got registered in a company and getting registered for that and
we didn't do any of that until we knew the people wanted it so we gave them a deadline for sort of
end of September October last year um to get enough numbers and enough people did register so we
went to the next stage which was forming the company registering the company um all the legal
stuff you have to do and then we said right well we'll issue shares and if enough people buy shares
um we'll start building the core network we're not trying to raise the whole 2 million in one go
well we need say 200 000 pounds to build the core and so if we get that we will then start to buy
equipment and then we will start to build the core um so enough people actually registered far more
than we expected at bought shares I mean and we got 300 000 pounds we needed 204 000 I think we
we needed so we went ahead and we bought all the materials we would need uh the ducting to build the
core can uh can I just tell you there and ask you two questions the first is um what type of
company did you set up is this a profit company or no no we set it up um we'd had all these
parish meetings so first of all we went to the parish council and we said to them is your community
interested in broadband and they all said yes and then because they'd had lots of letters and
complaints and everything else about broadband so we said well if you will put on an event and
provide tea and cake we will come and present to your parish parishioners our plan so they all did
and we went and we presented our plan to the people of the parishes and then they could ask questions
and they gave us feedback and they gave us ideas and we we then decided that the only company that
we could uh form it's registered with the FSA if financial services authority and it's a
a community benefit company and the difference between that and the uh the other sort of CIC
is some CICs are for the benefit of the shareholders and some CICs are for the benefit of the community
and ours is the one it's a co-op that's for the benefit of the community what's a CIC for uh
community interest company okay yeah and um the difference is whatever income or expenditure
we make has to be returned to the community it's not returned to the shareholders the shareholders get
a fair return of interest for for their subscription they'll always get a fair return but they'll
never get a massive return any money we make has to go back where it's come from and because
everybody who's bought a share whether it's 100 shares or 20,000 shares they only have one vote
so everybody in the community who's got a share can come to the meetings and vote as to where
the money will go if and when a profit is made and so if if the community says well the church
roof is falling getting we want to mend the church roof then that's what we'll do if that's what
they vote for and if they say well we've made all this money we want to help another community
and get them some decent broadband and then that means we'll make even more money to mend our church
roofs in the future we'll do that and if they say we've we've we've helped enough people now we're
big enough we'd rather have a reduction in price we'll do that it's not to all of us that's
the sort of company we formed and we've got these very legal legally binding rules and
we can't change our minds I change the rules so that's our rules and that's what we have to stick to
okay that's fantastic and another thing I'd like to ask is you're rolling out fiber optic
would you not would it not be just simpler to roll out something like microwave which is
or MMDS or something like that well that's what we do now and is that not meeting the bill or
why is that no no no it's it's not so it's very hard work we've been doing it since 2005 that
for one thing you've got to have the scale of numbers to get the back hole in it's an affordable
price and so that means you've got to tap into fiber somewhere to get a decent back hole
radio stuff falls off even the best designed stuff we've we've just moved on to nanos which are
ubiquity kit and they're very very good at nanos and it's made our network a lot better but it's
still not good enough for tomorrow's needs it gets us by we're very happy with it we're very pleased
with it but then when something goes wrong how'd you find out what's wrong you know you can take
your 10 minutes to just find out what's wrong with it and it's nearly always a case of telling them
to turn it off and on again and that fix is it but it is labour intensive because it's too small
to have permanent staff you see you've got to have a network that's big enough to pay somebody to
look after it properly you've got to be able to pay the right technicians and with fiber there's
very little goes wrong it's not like Wi-Fi or a copper phone network in an old exchange that's
falling in falling down with really old infrastructure this is a brand new fiber network and it will
just work and you're going to lay an individual can you tell me a little bit about the network it's
going to be are you going to be putting in the fiber yourself or just putting in the ducting or
we're doing everything and what what skills we haven't got in the community we'll get people
trained up for those skills but we've all we're finding that we actually do have the skills in
the community you know even at a qualified fiber supply to contact us the other day
just for my to the woodwork as your project progresses you can't guarantee they're going to be
there but I would imagine most communities have every skill you need within their community
okay so talk to me about the the network you're going to build up a core and then are you going to
like daisy chain from one house to the next house or the next house or how are you what's the plan
the the plan it's the network has been designed instead of going in a straight line along the road
from one village to another which we we could have done and it's going from farm to farm so it's
zigzagging all the way across the hills and so the actual core goes to a lot of farms on its way
and it links up that all the eight parishes and at each end it it goes into dark fiber so it's fed
from both ends so if there's an accident there won't be a trendy real mentor an explosion I don't think
but if the fibers cut through for any reason and the network won't fall down because it's resilient
it's fed at both ends so the actual design of it's really good and there's 400 or so properties
on that core and they will be connected with this money that we've got in as we're digging it
the other routes can start to dig to meet it whenever the farmers are ready the farmers are digging
at all in where possible when it's going under roads or rivers or railways or anything technical
we're using professional contractors but we're keeping that to the barest minimum because every time
we have to pay somebody it costs us money and we have to get more shares in whereas the farmers
aren't getting paid as such they're getting paid in shares so for every meter they dig they get
1.50 now for some farmers they can make a lot of shares but in the fiber it feels nice and straight
and fairly big but for some farmers with the little porky paddocks and stone walls and fences and
ditches and it's going to be quite a hard job for them so they'll really end the 1.50
whereas some people could make you know a few thousand pounds in shares in a week it's a look
at the draw really but so there's going to be one line from one end meandering over the hills
and then ends at another place so how are you going to splice the cable then into the houses and
such? Well the fiber itself is inducted and each part of the route has different sizes of ducks
so the bit we put in last week was 24 7mm ducks with one central core of 16mm bound into one
big fat orange pipe that comes on a roll and that part of the design was to feed 20 houses at one
side of the road and the next bit of the network that moved on to somewhere else and you go from
access chamber to access chamber so these access chambers is all photos on the flicker side if
anybody wants to see them they're like you dig a hole you put this this plastic tray in and some
gravel and then you put another tray on then you put another tray on then you put the concrete
top on so it's like four layers and inside that the ducting comes into that access chamber and then
into what's called a splice bullet and these splice bullets are so big plastic things and the
ducting goes in and then things happen inside and different ducks come out it's all too clever for
me but I know that's what goes in and then as the ducting goes up the field you start where you come
to a house and you break out one of those cores of ducting and then you just leave that and carry on
and then when the house is ready to go on you dig a little trench to the house and you
couple up a 7mm duct to the 7mm duct you you're broken out and that then goes up the person's garden
it can go under the flags or round the duct pond or wherever until it gets into the house
so you drill a hole into the house pop your little duct through and then when you're ready and
and they're all ready to blow you just blow your fiber from the little access chamber and the fiber
has come from the closet tub it's all there ready and the access chamber blown and you just blow it
through into the houses fantastic so what sort of speeds can you expect we're not expecting anything
we're getting a thousand megabits symmetrical a gigabyte network both ways both ways can I move
up there please that's what everybody's saying how much bottle of air in a bit 30 pounds a month
30 pounds a month for a gigabit network yeah wow and the equipment that goes in your house consists
of a battery pack which will keep you connection up for the reckon about four hours the
I think the guarantees two hours but you're only talking a water something so it's not going to
use anything really like a UPS or something yes it's just yeah yeah a UPS battery pack and that's
about the size of a brick and ways about as much as a brick and then from that comes your client
premise equipment which again is about the size of a brick but not as fast and that screws onto
the wall and so your fiber goes into that and then you put four one gig ethernet ports and two
phone sockets and and Wi-Fi so you've got 300 meg Wi-Fi in your house as well because that's as
fast as Wi-Fi I'll go at the moment really homes and I guess you can start using color fibers all
and bring that up to 30 gigabits if you want it you won't count you want you've got it in your
house that's the thing you see I'm starting to cry here but that's the thing it would cost us
the same to put a hundred meg network in because you know the lights for a hundred meg are just
as expensive as the lights for a gig so we might as well light it up to gig and be done might the way
yeah exactly okay some practical things firstly there's some grumpy farmer who does
someone to go over her land or his land or whatever oh we've got one of those yeah so the grumpy
farmer says oh no she says you have to pay me if you want to go over my land and we said well
actually we're not paying anybody nobody's getting paid we're all volunteers and the farmers are
letting us go over the land because they know it's helping the community and they'll get a good
connection well I don't want a connection I don't have anything to do with computers and the
things I'm too old for that I want pain if you're going on my land and we said no sorry we're not
paying anybody oh well you can't come on then so fair enough so we got to the next farm and we
said you know is there is there any land next to that farm that's yours and then we can come
round that farm to get to you and she said oh of course there is if you just go through that
get there you straight onto my land and you can come to me and then go right pass them and carry
on up the hill to the next farm so that's what we do if they don't want it it's fine we don't give
them any pressure it doesn't matter but they won't get a connection so we don't leave the
many fibers to that property and what if they change the money later on if they change the mind
is the digs coming through which personally I think they will if we haven't had to reroot too far
or if we can go back to our original route they will go on no hard feelings but if we have to
reroot and if it works out say another 20,000 pounds you've got to go on a road or something to get
past them roads cost a lot of money to trench on a road and I think we're going to write it into
another document which isn't yet on the website because it's not been you know the whole committee
has to decide on something and agree before we do anything we'll just say in the case of
X property it cost us 20,000 pounds to D2 around it if that property wants a connection in the future
it will cost 20,000 pounds I think that's the only fair way because a lot of farmers haven't got
computers aren't interested the kids do it on the next farm or the farm you know they're not
interested they really aren't some of them I mean some it's a day-to-day struggle just to keep
alive yeah I understand it and so if we go to them and we explain what we're doing they say I okay
last year you can go through my fields but don't come telling me about computers because I don't
want to know fair enough yeah it's fair enough if they're letters through you know why should
you know why should there be penalized and and everybody else have to pay more just because one
person's a bit selfish okay um yeah I can see that but also what if one of the farms gets old
from one reason or another and so I'm enterprising young person decides well I've got this cable
here now I can just cut it into and you know be dumb of it what do you mean say they say the cables
running through farmer excess farmers X's land and farm farmer Y buys it and decides that
you know there's a cable there I'm just going to dig it up and get rid of it you're going to have
to obviously reroute around that um well it's in our Weirleaf document that if it these Weirleafs
are sort of as legally binding as we can make them without making them 40 pages the Weirleafs
are signed off as we go as the farmer agrees with maps so we print them a Google maps so they
can actually see the colors of the fields and know exactly that we're putting it in the right
place they want it they're also given an ordnance survey type printout and and we have a copy they
have a copy with a sign Weirleaf and that Weirleaf goes with their deeds and so it's the same as if
there's a BT line on your land if you've given Weirleafs for that line you mustn't cut it
you know if you cut it by accident then it gets mended it's as simple as that but if you say
you don't want it on your land anymore we've put in the Weirleafs that you have to give us 12
months notice to reroute so if for any reason they didn't want it on the land I can't think why
I know if anybody wouldn't want it I mean I'm going to be a last I'm not on the core um you know
we thought of that possibility we hope we thought of everything but we're always listening in case
we've missed something um I'm just just going through here how um listening to quite a lot of
these episodes you know shows here in the HBR and that are about broadband and stuff in the US
this the communities in the US have often released and also here in the Netherlands have sold
rights for networking to cable providers or who else do you do you think that would be an issue
for other communities um so I don't know I don't really know about other what other communities
would do with the networks but our network can never be sold to a a telco that's in it just to
make a profit for shareholders or themselves it can only ever be sold to another community
interest companies in our rules it can only ever be a cooperative look and if it's of the
community the only the only difference is if we went completely bankrupt it would have to be
liquidated and then anybody could buy it but also in our where leaves we've got a clause that says
if for any reason the company becomes a commercial company I wish I can't actually remember how
it's worded but it's worded in such a way that if our company barn is not a cooperative any more
it's it goes bust and it's taken over then the farmer then has the right to mean negotiate the
where leaves which means that if if somebody makes us go bust mentioning non-names
and and we're liquidated then whoever buys the company would then have to pay out millions of
pounds to the farmers to be able to authorate the network and lots and lots and lots of farmers
to lots of farmers yes it'd be a nightmare actually giving the giving this
where leave because this support of the community and they want a good broadband connection and
this is the only way they'll ever get one but it's a different matter if it's going to be run on
a commercial basis they're entitled to payment for their where leaves okay how much how much
support have you got from this from the local government local community schools businesses
plenty of support from the community massive support from the local businesses we've got
support from the schools because they're paying a lot for their connections at the moment and
we can supply it a lot cheaper we've actually got people who bought double shares which means
they get a free connection and can give a free connection to somebody less fortunate
because if you buy 1,500 pounds with a shares in our company you get a free connection and a
year's free service so that seems to be what most people have bought the minimum you can buy
is 100 pounds if you want if you buy 500 pounds in this country you can get 30% tax back on it
so that's a government scheme for high-risk community enterprises like wind farms and broadband
stuff buying the village pub and village shops and things the government will actually give you
30% of your money straight back as cash so that's a really good incentive and a lot of people have
said well with my extra 1,500 pounds share you can put the church on or the school on or the
chapel on or that little lady down there on fantastic yes it is it's brilliant the community are
absolutely brilliant and but that's the only support we've had from government is that little
perk it's really really helped us as that one thing is really true yeah I was just looking at
your website and the amount of people that seem to be involved the amount of
engineers and whatever you seem to have an impressive team up there we've got a very very
team and each person has made an invaluable contribution to the project it could be bringing in
their own skillset and opinions and ideas and you know the logistics fellow is totally brilliant
he is the local tractor-mender he's a mechanical engineer and he mends your rib and if that goes
he can put cattle grids in for you he can mend tractors he can mend cars he also is our aerial
fitter because he's the only qualified person to climb on some of these roof and usually when he's
up on the roof he cleans the gutter out and mends the odd slate and he fits our antennas for the
Wi-Fi network and and he's turned into our logistics man and he organises the taking the deliveries
of the cable and all the mannels and you know this a heck of a lot of stuff being delivered on wagons
and he arranges where it goes in in the yard he's secured as a yard and stacks it all up he knows
exactly where each release because each feels different the different course and then he gets
them to where they've got to be when somebody's starting to dig and he's absolutely brilliant you know
the different skills that we've all got I don't know what my skills are probably just yapping on
but you're doing a very good job there's lots of people listening with a bit of breath to this
and tell me is the network being built at the minute yes yes we started building we um
well about 10 minutes ago I was telling you about the the the the the where we we got going
so we got the share issue sorted and we had the share launch and all the people came and
and then they started buying shares and and when we had enough shares we decided we're going to dig
but once you start to dig you've actually got to dig something so we had a a dig ceremony with the
mayor the local mayor and he came and turned the first sod and I had the all arranged that spear
in Jackson which is a company that makes spades would come and bring 200 spades for us
so we could line all the spades up you know the community digging for a gig and uh but then they
couldn't get the spades to us in time so we just said to the people come along and and bring
your own spade and the did and the hundred and odd of them in a big long line uh digging and the
mayor turning the first sod and that was a great publicity exercise and uh the
picture on the website actually yeah yeah well that picture was actually taken by another member
of our committee who's really good at taking pictures mounting and uh he put it on flicker and
we invited all the press and we invited all the television companies and we invited all the
counsellors none of them came just the people came the community came with the spades and we got
those pictures up and then all of a sudden the mayor on Sunday got the story and put it in the
mail like uh one of our national weekend newspapers and then the BBC wanted pictures and the BBC
were ringing up saying can you get a lot of people with spades and I said no I said we've done
that you were asked to come and you didn't and uh so they had to they had to whistle so um so that
was our uh dig launch event so and then um this week it's been on the tele and we were doing some
malplowing this week so I emailed all the tele people again and said do you want to come do
the press do you want to come but uh none of them turned up so we did this dig and I
live streamed it you know I've ever live streamed yeah bring me your phone yeah I'm well we're
well familiar with that yeah yeah well that's that's what I did I just live streamed the malplow
what's malplow the malplow is it's just one of the ways you can lay the duct in so the the real
goes on the malplow and it goes over the top of the malplow and at the back like a new
mattic drill oh yeah yeah yeah I've seen one you tried your ducting through it and it just it just
hummers it down into the ground somehow it's really good how it does it and it hardly leaves the
mark it's how I did mine appear and I led my fiber it's a malplow I used so okay the main
doctrine who exactly is doing that are you contracting that out to somebody or no no the farmers
the farmers can do it if they want to if they can't the or they want or they haven't got the
equipment then a neighboring farmer can do it for them and if all else fails then a contractor
and they're happy to do this on time and and you know this seems to be up to now yeah we've
another one kicking off this next week he's he's got his own JCB which I don't think will need
very much except for the access chambers there everybody needs a JCB yeah well there every the
access chambers are every 500 meters and I guess he could do one of them in 10 minutes and you get
50 pounds for an access chamber for putting one of them in but he's is friend or he's brother in
law or somebody has two or three different kinds of diggers and the terrain where he lives is going
to need digging I don't think we'll be able to malplow up there and he's kicking off next week
and he's paying he's own either friend or brother or whoever he's paying them and then he's claiming
the one pound 15 shares so he'll be out of pocket and he'll also have shares instead of the money
in the bank but he's prepared to do that to get it to his farm yeah I would be too and what if
like was rock or something we've got we've got the equipment to get through rock when we laid water
to our farm and actually dynamited it there's always a way there's a will as a way there's a
will there's a relation that's for sure this is this is a seriously amazing I could talk on
night tea about this I'll just tell the listeners my brother is living outside of a
well there was an area designated urban area where the telcos could lease put down fiber connections
or at least cable connections or reasonably high network speeds but he is in the rural
zone area which is the other you know 100 meters away and because of that they have to be supplied
by wireless they're not allowed to run cable out to them so it's just a plot the hell and there's
that the government released it while I was a 30 year license to this other company but
anyway since then it's all been it's all been sorted and he heard today that is the possibility of
some actual cable network coming down to excellent but he he I have been with him working through the
MMDS the microwave the Wi-Fi chain mesh networks and as you say yourself it's all really it's all
just a hack unless you got the cable and fiber it did you is there anybody connected to the
network as yet is there is there ones and zeros we're not going live until the next big event
we'll be on what we're thinking we've more or less decided it's the first of July but we're
sort of arguing amongst ourselves because me and another couple think it should be the fourth of
July but still then independence day the revolt of peasants I like that but apparently apparently
the doubt fiber that we're leasing straight into peering at Manchester and the contract should start
paying on the first of the month and so we lose three days connectivity if we went on the fourth
of July but I still think it makes a point doesn't it the fourth of July you can always announce it
on the fourth of July the first three days are testing yeah we could test it for three days
yes exactly and who's what's the story to get the back hole how does that work where you're
plugging into we're plugging into the geo line and and we're plugging at quama which is
you're going to have to tell us what a geo line is because geo is just a company okay private
company that the tones dark fiber okay yeah you sort of limited the there's one on the railways
that is I think it's called global crossing there's virgin fiber that goes all over the place
from time to time there's no rural customers on it but there is dark fiber in the dogs
and there's another company called geo there's one called cable and wireless I think
and you've got to really find the one that's in your area and then you're not digging too far
to get to it and the one that seemed to work best for us was this geo one and it's led on a gas
pipeline so when the gas was put in to go from city to city it came right across a valley
and on top of it somebody had the sense to lay a fiber duct god pity there are more of those
people around yeah I'm not sure whether it was geo or another company called NTL that later
went bust I can't don't know the history of it but it belongs to geo and they're leasing as a
dark fiber to Manchester to the peering point that's our closest peering point so you rent it by
the meter this stuff so the closer you are to a peering point the cheaper you can action will be
as it was and then okay how many customers you need to be able to pay for it yeah and we need
at least 600 customers and we've got the potential on fairs one to have 1500 customers that's the
business that is the business and you and you say in this you're taking two connection points
are they going to be both at the same place or it does it do a big loop or does it just go to
no the network itself is three quarters of the circle yeah and the the dark fiber finishes the
circle okay and then it's it's resilient then okay and it's the same provider for both yeah
yeah it's the same pipeline actually yeah geo pipeline and what what speeds do they off here
are you using the limits on that there's no limit it's fiber you can light it at terribits if you want
so we're getting 40 gig in so that's what's going into the network well and you but surely you'll
have to pay more for some some points you need to go to a tier one provider or a tier three provider
I think that's what we're doing isn't it yeah but don't get me on don't get me on the
complicated stuff now but it's a GIX or something yeah yeah okay we're straight into peering with
Google and the BBC and everything yeah oh I know where I'm going on my holidays this year you're
only very welcome you see it's it's really increasing tourism already because they're all
coming to stay in local places to find out about it so we've had four lots of network people
staying in the local pub which is really good for bed and breakfast but just think how much the
holiday cottages I'll be able to change yeah exactly I mean I'm I keep you know I good
Ireland has I come from Ireland originally and there's a lot of rural decline there and I mean
you could you know five euros in a cup of coffee with by your housing estate you know
yeah and these places are in the most beautiful set you know for a few grand you can buy a house
or a whole series of houses with your own harbor onto the Shannon and it you know gorgeous day
why wouldn't you live somewhere that's nice and peaceful if you can telecommute yeah right
well I mean I'm actually about serious about this okay you've done an awful lot of work well done to
your team what if somebody listening to this show has the idea well I want to do something similar
myself and they've done a lot of work can I reuse your work gosh can gosh can that's a whole idea
once we've got all the books out of it because there's still obstacles we don't know what they are
yet it's just like when we're digging along a line and we hit solid rock like you say but there's always
a way either round it through it or over it and it's the same with any other obstacles we just
have to deal with them when we come to them but everything will be documented as we go along
and other other communities who want to have a go they can adapt our plans to suit their
environment and their people and you know their wealth because some communities are wealthy and
you know this this project would have been flying by now if it was down south you know this shares
would have come in thick and fast but this is a very poor area you know people have had to save
up to get their share yeah very very impressive I'll tell you it's an inspiring it's an inspiring
project do you have any option for somebody like me to buy a meter of fiber or something just
for the crack as a donation to the project hey that's a good idea oh why don't we think of that
flip it all right all you need to do is put a paper button up on your website so also a meter of
fiber yeah wouldn't that be fantastic I mean if you even if it was on here pound you don't need
a million people to do it to get a million pounds wouldn't yeah not a bother is actually start
kick start to campaign and you've got sheep up there yeah well we we're a dairy farm but yes
we have sheep you could like a little jiffy bag full of sheep here hair with a little bit of fiber
or something and if you know like a 10 centimeters of fiber charging the dollar for that or 10
dollars for something else yeah put the name in a manhole or something yeah name the manholes
for a hundred dollars oh I wish I'd talk to you sooner so a manhole is a hundred yeah I get
to run the manhole named after you or somebody else yeah oh it's oh wait so I tell the committee
about this so I'm not 100 so a meter of fiber is a fiber yeah give me like for a tenor at like a
you know like 10 centimeters of fiber and you know some sheep hair or a photograph of a cow or
something oh the admin on that could be horrendous actually I could we do it it's
it have to be a a photograph online with your name on it yeah yeah well and all you need to do
is you could donate like a you know a your name in a bottle so all you somebody could buy like
I don't know for ten dollars put in a put their name into a bottle and you buried the bottle
along the pipe somewhere plastic bottle well it could be a glass bottle it could be just in the
fiber wrapping around with a bit of solute it could be a it could be a it could be a permanent marker
yeah that'll work yeah most of the ducks we use in a bright orange perfect we use a black permanent
marker write the names on the duck film the duck going in those people will then see where their
names are buried yeah on a meter of fiber absolutely excellent right have we got anything for a
thousand pounds what come the out I think they could have the cabinet if they get a thousand pounds
what you do is you when they come over to visit so you put them in the bnb and they don't have to
they get a free night in the bnb free pub and a tour free pub at two yeah a night in the bnb a romantic
weekend up there yeah now that's going to that's going to cost you a three hundred pounds to do that
well then make it two grand I'll make a five grand come on all right five grand for the
five grand for the luxury weekend yeah okay weekend so what for a grand pool let me see
what will be good for what about the hub what about what I know what about we've got five
village nodes yeah one of them's inside an institute and the and there's three of them that are
outside in big cabinets yeah you put the name on on a plaque and call them after that the nodes
a thousand pounds ones yeah well many do you have we've got three you want to charge more than a
thousand pounds for that well they'll have five thousand two you can put an auction up or something
or auction auction oh do you want to be on our committee this is how we get people on the committee
we we wait till we see a bright spark and we know I fear I have you know for my place at the moment
oh what a good idea right I will run that by the committee and you can have simple ones in there
there are sheep farmers are there pardon you you have caused yeah we have cows on our farm yeah
okay then they can you have calves no doubt yeah calves yeah then you sell for for you know five
you five dollars or something we get to name a calf five dollars name a calf well it's nothing
really to do with fiber is it that one well I can't believe it doesn't matter this leap on the
on the fiber supporting the network it's all about the community all right fiber digital calf
and you can also put it out for people that you know to donate whatever for a school you know if
you've got schools in the area that they can that they can also have the feel good to you know
provide it for the school yeah yeah I think with more or less got the schools covered with free
connections now with the generosity of the locals really what we want to do is we want to put
webcams in the churches yeah on the church inside the churches so that the people because around
here there's lots of church going farmers and they've gone to church all the lives these people
and now they're getting too old to get to church and they don't like bothering the kids to run
them to church yeah yeah and and they don't want to be a nuisance and they're really a bit too
feeble and poorly to get to church on time and to kneel down and to get in and out of the car it
hurts them because they're really getting frail now and and they miss church and they miss the
social aspect of church and seeing everybody and seeing what app they've got on and seeing if they're
looking well or seeing if they're walking without a stake and they're in to going to church these
people and they can't get there anymore and we thought if we could get webcams in the churches
they could watch the church service every week on the tallies very good i like it
yeah i also like if you're doing that put the web cameras up on the top
we had that in a previous place i worked had a very high tower and people could
it was a motorized one so they could move it around all right nice um listen this is going to
um uh we have no time restrictions here in hbr so i'm going to keep talking because if you've got
the time this is i saw on your website that local people will be also learning how to splice
cable and whatever if you've got that amount of um data available to you every farm could actually
have a data center in it yes yes yes do you have um because you you could actually get
another's a a few hosting companies who would be happy to host servers over there for people
yeah yeah we would like to actually like to build our own data center one day but we're concentrating
on the job in hand which is get locked into a network and getting the funding in
to build the rest of the phase one network because i think it's 42 more routes we have
joining into the core and on those routes are a lot of farmers who are desperate for a connection
so you know there's there's the core route to do and get it lit on the first of july and then as
that is getting built all the other places see it's getting built know it's happening because
a lot of people you know don't believe we can do it so we've got to do it prove we can do it
then they then by shares and they will start to dig to the core um and that'll take the best part
of a year altogether to get this phase one done already we're being bombarded with requests from
the phase two area and one village two villages i think have already been accepted into phase one
because they've raised enough money themselves to pay for us to get to them if you know what i mean
i do yeah yeah and and one was the chap on the BBC new story the other night he's a film producer
and if he makes even a small film it takes all night and the next day to upload so it's having
to pay couriers to take dbds everywhere you know with his work or post dbds um so he's desperate for
it and he's explained to all his neighbours why they should do it and he's very good at explaining
it in fact we need him on the committee actually and and and he got in touch with Barry who's the
man who's designed the network he's the real brains behind it all um and he worked out how much
it would cost to get that village on and how many houses would have to be on it to make it viable
and he told them and they did it so they'd been accepted and there's another one that's
almost accepted but they just haven't raised enough money yet and if they do they'll be on
phase one so fantastic it it's a case that you've got to help yourself haven't yet and all the people
have realised from what we've told them at meetings that this isn't somebody coming and doing it for
you if you want it you have to do it yourselves and but like I'm a farmer out there in the middle of
nowhere what do I need to do what can I how would I go about doing what it is that needs to be done
do I need to wait for the cable to come to the next farmer or does you have to take an interest
and you have to read your newsletters you have to register that you're interested and then we know
you are okay so I'm interested come the root walkers will say where do you want the cable in your land
and and they'll be given a plan of where we think it should go but what we find in it is the farmer
knows best so if we've drawn a root down the left hand side of his field he'll say you don't want
to be going down that side because there's solid rock down that side or there's a ditch down
that side or it's all wet down that side come around this side it's a lot better land
yeah that's where we go I'll say you can't go that way because you'll cut all my drains you have
to go this way and so we do what the farmer wants so that's his first contact with us really
and then he gets more interested then he goes and has a two to see what the other farms are doing
and what the digging is going on then he thinks to himself oh I said you think I can't do that
they're gonna have to do it for me or I'll go around and see Fred next door with the digger and
ask him to do mine or he'll say oh that looks easy I'll do that and can they have the trench done
beforehand can they have the trench done beforehand or what do you mean can they have it done
say doesn't have to be that farmay is done and then farm be used to
oh no no no it's like it is just like a jigsaw puzzle any any any bit can be done at any time
like I say we're concentrating on the core but if any of the sub-roots wanted to get going they
could do and wants to cause anywhere near them they can start to dig to join it but we can't afford
to finance them all at the moment you see but this stuff is plug and play so it's all compression
joints just like plastic central eating pipe so right just a skill to it you can't have corners and
bends yeah it's got to be led completely level and straight but as long as they come and watch
what one farm is doing and make sure it's you know they know what they're doing that it's completely
within the skill site of any farmer who's dug a drain so it's within so it's 25 meters of
straight flask and then you go to a a manhole and then you enter the next one and that's
changed all the way along uh the ducting yeah it's just yeah it's plug and play but it's 500 meters
between each manhole cover 500 meters yeah I wrote meters and then from the main duct it can be
another kilometer or two or three or four to the farm yeah yeah fantastic but we've tried to get
as many in on the core routers we possibly can and we've purposely chosen the worst bit of our
area to take the core through it's the roughest wildest bleakest terrain why is that because they're
the most desperate people yeah of course and then of course once you've done that everything is
easy after that because it should get easier yeah until you get into the villages and you get
somebody saying oh you can't go there because that's where our dogs buried yeah exactly and
there's lots of different problems in the villages exactly and the last few the last few
miles I guess to get to the the termination point how was that going to work out for you
there's the termination pipes are actually in the villages actually in the on the farms and in the
communities that we've chosen we've only I'm not sure how far we have to dig at the north point
but I think it's only a few meters but I know it at the south point at Cuorma we've 25 meters
from our hub to the to the geo pipeline fantastic brilliant brilliant this is seriously a very
inspirational project I must say I'm very impressed by all the documents that you've put up and I'm
glad to see the Jamaican them available and I do hope that at least at least over the weekend
we'll talk about putting at least a PayPal button up so you can at least be getting donations
it won't be over the weekend I've got to run it by the committee obviously but you know we've all
got to agree to something before we do it and I'm very glad to hear that as well listen Chris
tell it you know we're gonna do it I'll make it we do it I think it's a brilliant idea thank you
not a bother I look forward to getting a photo of my meter of cable
meter of cable well I'd love to be having a fiber of your PayPal not a bother do you take euros
listen to Chris again thank you very much for coming on the show I hope this is inspirational for
a lot of people I know that lost and Bronx has got a show in the queue about the difficulty of
accessing the internet where he lives I don't know how applicable this will be to him but at least
it's food for thought it's food for thought for me for when I go home I intend to bring a lot of
this documentation down to my local customer well you've got to share the knowledge haven't you if
everybody shared the knowledge we wouldn't all have to reinvent the wheel would we it's it's what you're
saying makes perfect sense look another thing another thing while I'm on I might as well do a
shameless plug here please do and I was contacted I'm on Twitter and I was contacted on Twitter by
this chat who's doing some work for the digital assembly in Europe have you heard of the digital
assembly in Europe please tell our listeners all about us well it's nearly Cruz who's the vice
president of the European Assembly and and they asked me because I'm active on Twitter to be what's
called an online animator and my job is to get people talking about high speed broadband I don't
really I'm not quite 100% sure of what I'm supposed to do yet because I've never done anything
like this before but what they want me to do is tweak things and use a certain hashtag which is
hashtag DA 12 BB the Delta Alpha one two BB Bravo Bravo yeah and so I tweet with that hashtag
anything that I can find to do with super fast broadband and they have it's all these hashtags
and then what I'm supposed to do I'm supposed to engage people who write these blogs on super fast
broadband and ask them how Europe can help roll out high speed broadband to all the people of
Europe and that's my job so that's a shameless plug for what I'm actually doing as well as bound
are you getting paid for? I'm supposed to be getting paid I've never actually seen anything
anything but I would do it anyway because this is our chance for the grassroots people to make
the voices heard because I'm sure lots of people are convinced we already have broadband and
it is important to do the job properly and not just patch up and get met do with other
solutions everybody needs a fiber and I think the best way to do it is to do it to the rural people
first and let new networks like barn start up and stand or fall on the on the merits I don't mean
they should be propped up with enormous amounts of public money but I do think you know this
should be given a chance to thrive anything to do with innovation should be given a chance and
that's where Europe should be spending its support and information and knowledge and funding
on things like that rather than patching up and bonding copper pairs together to get a couple
of mega per hillside I think that's a waste of public money so that's why I'm active in this area
and for the listeners who might not be familiar with Nelly Cruz who is one of my
well she's a Dutch politician and a favorite of mine she was the woman behind the Microsoft
lawsuit here in the U that got the Samba protocols released to the Samba team they
the SIFS protocols as an open standard she's also heavily involved in getting
rid of mobile roaming charges across Europe and she's also pushing forward an idea now where
regardless of where you are in Europe your telephone bill would be the same regardless of which
country you go into so needless to say she is she is a formidable woman and it's always quite
interesting to hear anything that she puts her mind to so if you can please use that hashtag
will be in the show notes for this episode and just one thing that struck me while I was talking
to you there if you're setting up this company could you also not and you're rolling out all these
fibers all over the place could you also not have pico gsm transmitters in people's houses and run
your own mobile phone network it is one of the things I now wish list we were thinking of femt ourselves
really but I have heard of pico cells but I'm not the technical person you know the difference
between a pico cell and a femt ourselves I wouldn't know the difference either I'm just saying
well the the idea is that we we get hold of some of these things I know a vodafone do them in
this country to boost their signals but we've a mixture here we've got orange or two vodafone
tea mobile and so how do you actually do it I'm not quite sure but the theory is that every one
of these fiber farms that are on hills and their deals all over the place if they all had one of
these transmitters that means that the area we live in where none of us can get mobile signals in
most of the places it means our farmers are safer on the tractors and other cells because there
will be ubiquitous mobile connection everywhere I will could possibly do it with a Wi-Fi cloud as
well so that things like smartphones would automatically have a signal and connect wherever the
farmer is because they use CB's at the moment CB videos yeah that is that is absolutely fantastic
there is a by the way there's an open source telecommunications project two of them where they
in the same way that you're simplifying the network down to using fiber and not worrying all about
all the legacy stuff there's a simplified GSM network with relatively cheap equipment that you
can do that sort of thing using open source Linux servers on the back end all right
we've got any names or links I shall send you some links yeah run it past the committee
I'm familiar with they were getting very used to this committee come I mean if we build this
network these things will come there will be people within the community you said let's do this
and we say crack on there build yourself a business out of it make yourself some money bring
employment into the community do whatever you want this is your network use it it is it really is
just the electrification of the nation really it's it's it should really be everybody's right to have
just a big fat pipe that you can run the run server and do your own thing in your own area
yeah um Chris it's it's been absolutely fantastic to talk to you it's been a pleasure
I I I'm looking at the map here of Lancaster uh Lancashire sorry and I see the black pool is
not too far away we can actually see black pool from where we dug the first sod
do you fillet tower we dug the first sod at Jubilee tower and we looked across and we could see
black pool tower and we could almost see the island of man but it was a bit too misty
how come black pool is some part of Lancashire padden is black pool part of Lancashire
yes black pools part of Lancashire yet google maps it seems to have it outside the Lancashire
no black pools in Lancashire okay good stuff because there is a team of of fellow open source
who are over there in the you you cube event and they're they're promoting free and the open
technologies as well so I'll have them get in touch with you as well okay super duper
listen Chris thank you very much uh have a wonderful evening uh big thumbs up to everybody over there
and I seriously do intend to come over to the UK drop by and have a point you're very welcome
many time you want to come make it after the first of July and then you can test it out
oh great thank you very much fingers crossed we don't get held up with any gritty weather but
hopefully first of July will be up okay thank you very much Chris and all the information and
show notes that links to the various different websites and the documents will be in the show
notes for this episode oh I will of course and thank you very much everybody for listening
and tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of hacker public radio
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