Peter Scott wrote:

Fibre is the way to go if possible, should have life of 20 years or
more and upgrades just mean changing the kit on the ends. Symmetrical
100Mbps internet connection? See if you can sell bandwidth/services
from third party content providers.

Backhaul rather than local distribution (fibre or wireless) is
normally the hard bit, not sure how much BT want for a gigabit fibre
connection these days. How are your local schools connected? Or
hospital, is there an e-Health initiative happening or in the pipe
line? Maybe the community can piggy back on those connections.

Does fibre have to be laid in ducts?


Yes, but they dont have to be underground.Its normally 'blown' dwon
plastic tubes.

I know it is fragile in itself but
surely the cables are robust? The copper runs are all overhead once the
edge of the town is reached about 3km away. Has fibre ever been
installed overhead? I can see that fibre or wireless is the way it must
be done, but my original point is there has to be some commercial
imperative to get companies to do it. Allowing them to charge normal
rate for inferior service (and yes of course I know there are people
worse off than me) is not going to motivate them. It all smacks of the
English habit of putting up with things.

Peter Scott

Trouble with overhead, is that its not as simple to replace a bit of
optical fibre that a tree has crashed onto..


Mind you since a fibre is currently capable of about 8Gbps*, you don't
need a lot of em.


The real issue is taking power down to repeaters and splitters.

A whole new architecture is needed.

* from memory.