Rural broadband speeds
 

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:59:10 +0000, Peter Scott wrote:

However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly the same as people
who get 4 Mbit/s or better.

I don't like the way ADSL is marketed with the "up to" in a 6pt font or in
a footnote against the 8Mbps or 24Mbps in 144pt. Neither does OFCOM and is
attempting to do something about it.

If it meant that ISPs refused to accept rural connections then the
situation would be out in the open!"

And there would be no rural broadband at all, just like there is no cable
outside urban/medium sized town areas.

Solution is to get off your bum and get a community broadband service
running. Plenty of experienced help available, good starting point:

http://www.broadband-uk.coop/

Fibre DTH is possible, digging up roads is expensive and complicated
legally. So you don't dig up the roads but bring the land owners on board
to have fibre ducts laid under their land. Commercial contractors charge
for digging holes but out in the country there are plenty of people with
diggers, get them involved. There may even be some one with kit that can
mole the ducts through rather than having to cut 'n cover.

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.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Rural broadband speeds
 

In article , The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
the time?
Very complicated.

Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic
and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits.

And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line.

As he was already suggesting.

Rural broadband speeds
 

"Peter Scott" wrote in message
om...
This is not OT. Comms is a DIY matter when, like me, you are trying to
improve lamentable speed by filters, wiring etc. ....

"I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around 750
kbit/s....

Better than I do at my business. However, I found that paying for a 5:1
contention ratio made a great improvement to the service.

Colin Bignell

Rural broadband speeds
 

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? 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

Rural broadband speeds
 

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
Peter Scott wrote:

Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
the time?
Very complicated.

Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic
and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits.


And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line.

yes, that is what was being suggested. 2 lines achieves upto twice
peak and mean data rates. The clever bit is that it doesnt increase
ISP subscription costs any.


Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this
can over double the average speed?
No one sends uncompressed data over the internet anyway. Even the
meanest of web pages probably is compressed.

Yes, but
a) further compression is often possible
b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically
speed up webpage loading


Sorry mate, but we tried this way back in the 90's on international
links. we got about 10% improvement, at the expense of a doubling in
latency.

About the only ting that isn't compressed to the hilt these days is
usenet and text emails.

Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file
size by a factor of say 8, make little difference?


I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a
great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference,
and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these
things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters.

And the taxpayers would get pretty ****ed if the 0.1% who cant get 1Mbps
are paid for out of public money.

Its infrastructure that makes businesses work. Taxpayers dont mind
lots of other infrastructure with the same goal - and far more
expensive infrastructure at that. Although its not libertarian, it may
well add up financially for the public purse and country as a whole.



Get real. This is infrastructure for one person,. or at beast 20-30
people in his location.

I was discussing national investment in rural broadband. I would think
it clear that this will have a positive impact on british business. Do
you not think it would?


NT

Rural broadband speeds
 

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
Bruce wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

What you need is for BT to out in a whole new exchange nearer to you, or
run fibre or a microwave link to you. They will do that, if you pay. A
lot. If not, put up and shut up, or move.

Why not also complain that you have to drive ten miles to a supermarket?

Or that he has no mains drainage, and needs a septic tank instead.

It seems ridiculous to choose to live in the country "to get away from
it all", then complain bitterly when you find that there is one thing
you would have preferred not to get away from.

Rural living is about the whole package, which comes with many benefits
but some fundamental disbenefits. If you can't live with one or more of
the disbenefits, don't live in the country. Simple as that.

The OP is getting broadband speeds that actually seem very good for a
remote location. I hope OFCOM will tell him politely to stick his
"complaint" where the sun don't shine.

Businesses have now realised that getting real with potential
customers costs money, and its no longer acceptable. 750k isnt bad at
all for a rural location. If he were getting 56k I'd be more
sympathetic.


Its brilliant. I only changed from 512k last year. That was in fact more
than adequate for most of what I wanted.

Another thing that can be done is to have the local server cache as
much as possible with a big disc, then revisits to pages load real
fast, plus all the reused elements of new pages on the same site.
Browsers already do this of course, but only with limited cache, and
only one a per one user basis.


In the meantime, here's a practical alternative:
http://www.avcbroadband.com/

Looks usable for business use. Perhaps slow rural speeds is a blessing
in that it will encourage many businesses to create less bloated
sites. Whatever we have, the bloat will simply expand to fill the
space and more.

Well I am designing a web site that has to work on the need of s
broadband line: so its only able to deliver at best about 700kbps upload
to the net.

So I compressed it, and shrunk a 60k page to 16k..hahah.

Thats exactly what we need more of. I load so many webpages using 100s
of k, and would be happier if they used just 1/10th that. Grossly
bloated code plus bloated content are a pain.

The other thing that totally pees me off is the likes of screwfix
displaying just 10 search results per page, which grossly inflates
total data dl and dl time, and for no visible reason. People who do
that typically say 'but we have to think of dialup users' - do they
not realise that for dialuppers theyre making it even worse by loading
10 pages instead of one?


NT

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:41:43 UTC, wrote:

Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file
size by a factor of say 8, make little difference?

Because most of them are lossily compressed already?

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:00:25 +0000
The Natural Philosopher wrote:


It's entirely - in the limit - down to the length of wire to the exchange.


make it shorter, make it fibre, or replace with microwave link, and you
can get more speed.


All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay.

No-one ever asks us if we are willing to pay for it. They just refuse
to even offer it.

R.

Rural broadband speeds
 

On 8 Jan 2009 12:14:42 GMT
Huge wrote:

On 2009-01-08, wrote:

Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
neighbour's

Neighbour? Wossat?



The farmer in t'next valley.
R.

Rural broadband speeds
 

TheOldFellow gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying:

All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay.

No-one ever asks us if we are willing to pay for it. They just refuse
to even offer it.

********.

They "refuse" to offer faster ADSL because of the limits of the
technology.

They "refuse" to offer cable, because new cable hasn't been laid
_anywhere_ in the country for YEARS, because of the back debts from
laying the last lot.

You've been given links to faster rural broadband options, available
today. But they're clearly too expensive for you. Oh, wait, you've
claimed that's not the problem.

You'll get faster broadband at some stage, when BT's 21CN upgrades get
around to you. But that probably won't be fast enough for you, because
other people will still have better than you.

I bet you're a _nightmare_ whenever a delivery wagon pulls up outside
next door, trying to see if they've gone a step ahead of you so you need
to go and buy a newer/bigger/faster widget to stay level.

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:24:13 +0000, Peter Scott
wrote:

Lets take a parallel example - television reception. It is thought
proper that the whole country should get a television signal. Some areas
like hilly and coastal regions couldn't do so without local relays
serving a small number of people. Do we complain about the extra cost?

Many people in rural areas have to club together at their own expense
to build a 'self-help' TV relay station.

Does the relay user pay a higher licence fee? No, we accept the premise
that it is an essential service.

I don't accept that it's essential - I don't have a TV set...

--
Frank Erskine

Rural broadband speeds
 

On 8 Jan, 18:32, 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? 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

I've just found this on the BBC News website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7817748.stm

and would suggest that it is relevent to the discussion.

Rob

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 21:27:21 +0000, TheOldFellow
wrote:


Neighbour? Wossat?



The farmer in t'next valley.

"On the other side"

Na na na na, Na na na na.

Derek

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:46:54 -0800 (PST), wrote:

The other thing that totally pees me off is the likes of screwfix
displaying just 10 search results per page, which grossly inflates
total data dl and dl time, and for no visible reason.

For the first page of say a search result but after that there is the "See
All" option. What pees me off is sites that don't have that and/or no
crumb trail.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:32:59 +0000, Peter Scott wrote:

Does fibre have to be laid in ducts?

Normally yes. You lay the duct then blow the fibre through. So each end
point needs its own duct all the way back to a fibre hub. The fibre itself
contains two optical cores and two balancing ones but is still pretty
light and feeble. "Duct" might be misleading, AIUI, it's more of a bundle
of tubes one for each end point, I believe a 24 tube duct is about 2" dia.

I know it is fragile in itself but surely the cables are robust?

Robustish you can get robust fibre cables but I doubt they come cheap
compared to stuff you blow through a duct.

Has fibre ever been installed overhead?

Attached to the outside of the terraced houses is one of the ways that
fibre might be distributed in the town. It would make sense to be able to
fly across building gaps rather than go up and down.

Putting poles in probably isn't all that cheap, 20 poles per km? Not to
mention the visual impact. Not sure BT would let you share theirs.

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.

With low rural population densities it just isn't going to happen. Even
the government are baulking at the cost of a full UK wide "Next
Generation" installation, figures of £25bn being bandied about, they might
spend £10bn. The big plus is that the government are aware that commercial
companies will not cover rural areas and don't want that digital divide to
get any wider. I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.

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.

And getting them to charge an even lower rate is?

--
Cheers
Dave.

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:53:04 +0000, Owain wrote:

"area of outstanding natural beauty ... not allowed a dish ..."

Which AONB? No such restriction here (that I'm aware of). National Parks
are different ball game.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Rural broadband speeds
 

In article ,
Bruce wrote:

In the meantime, here's a practical alternative:
http://www.avcbroadband.com/

Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The
endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing
if you're patient. Web sites seem to have gone overboard a bit again,
however I was at the end of a 512Kb ADSL line ysterday for a bit, and yes,
it really felt slow, but it was more than usable with a bit of patience.

Big contrast the day before when I did an install that achieved 23Mb/sec
on ADSL2+... However that was in the big city (Bristol!) and 0.5Km from
the main exchange...

The faster ones might be very suitable for a small community who were
willing to share the costs though...

Gordon
(Living on the edge of Dartmoor in rural Devon, getting 8Mb ADSL :)

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 08:57:38 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson wrote:

Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The
endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing

Does that use the satellite for the uplink or do you still need a phone
line for that? The satellite only providing the down link?

The faster ones might be very suitable for a small community who were
willing to share the costs though...

It's certainly an option for the backhaul but you really need one with the
uplink on the satellite as well. Satellite doesn't do a lot for latentcy,
any gamers would throw a hissy fit. B-) I guess for ordinary browsing
you'd get use to the second or so delay from click to anything happening..

--
Cheers
Dave.

Rural broadband speeds
 

Owain wrote:
Bruce wrote:
In the meantime, here's a practical alternative:
http://www.avcbroadband.com/

"area of outstanding natural beauty ... not allowed a dish ..."

Owain


Even one on the ground behind a hedge? That was the solution a neighbour
arrived at when challenged by that problem. It was accepted. But I'd
guess they could have done that without even being noticed - but they
initially asked about putting one on their house. (That would have been
on a G2 house in small town - can't remember if it was a conservation
area or anything else, but it looked like it)

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

Rural broadband speeds
 

Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:41:43 UTC, wrote:

Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file
size by a factor of say 8, make little difference?

Because most of them are lossily compressed already?

doesnt make any difference to the fact that one can greatly reduce
file size by further (lossy) compression


NT

Rural broadband speeds
 

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:46:54 -0800 (PST), wrote:

The other thing that totally pees me off is the likes of screwfix
displaying just 10 search results per page, which grossly inflates
total data dl and dl time, and for no visible reason.

For the first page of say a search result but after that there is the "See
All" option. What pees me off is sites that don't have that and/or no
crumb trail.

Sometimes there is a 'see all', sometimes there isnt. When there is
you get to load the page twice - what a waste of time. When there
isnt...


NT

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 01:59:30 -0800 (PST), wrote:

Sometimes there is a 'see all', sometimes there isnt.

Not there for a list with less than 10 items?

When there is you get to load the page twice - what a waste of time.

True it would be better if you could make it sticky with a cookie or
something.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Rural broadband speeds
 

In article et,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 08:57:38 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson wrote:

Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The
endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing

Does that use the satellite for the uplink or do you still need a phone
line for that? The satellite only providing the down link?

According to the website, it's 2-way.

The faster ones might be very suitable for a small community who were
willing to share the costs though...

It's certainly an option for the backhaul but you really need one with the
uplink on the satellite as well. Satellite doesn't do a lot for latentcy,
any gamers would throw a hissy fit. B-) I guess for ordinary browsing
you'd get use to the second or so delay from click to anything happening.

Yup. Gamers would not be happy, but for people doing businessey type
stuff - ie. no games/p2p, big streaming stuff, it looks OK. They even say
that VoIP works OK over it. There will be latency, but that's managable,
even in VoIP.

I used an aramiska link some time back for interactive stuff (ssh)
and it was mangable. The latency wan't really noticable for general web
browsing or email.

Gordon

Rural broadband speeds
 

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:32:59 +0000, Peter Scott wrote:

Does fibre have to be laid in ducts?

Normally yes. You lay the duct then blow the fibre through. So each end
point needs its own duct all the way back to a fibre hub. The fibre itself
contains two optical cores and two balancing ones but is still pretty
light and feeble. "Duct" might be misleading, AIUI, it's more of a bundle
of tubes one for each end point, I believe a 24 tube duct is about 2" dia.

I know it is fragile in itself but surely the cables are robust?

Robustish you can get robust fibre cables but I doubt they come cheap
compared to stuff you blow through a duct.

Has fibre ever been installed overhead?

Attached to the outside of the terraced houses is one of the ways that
fibre might be distributed in the town. It would make sense to be able to
fly across building gaps rather than go up and down.

Putting poles in probably isn't all that cheap, 20 poles per km? Not to
mention the visual impact. Not sure BT would let you share theirs.

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.

With low rural population densities it just isn't going to happen. Even
the government are baulking at the cost of a full UK wide "Next
Generation" installation, figures of £25bn being bandied about, they might
spend £10bn. The big plus is that the government are aware that commercial
companies will not cover rural areas and don't want that digital divide to
get any wider. I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.

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.

And getting them to charge an even lower rate is?

Thanks for your useful contribution Dave. That's filled in a lot of gaps
in my knowledge about fibre. If BT were to do the cabling then they
would use their own poles of course and they are already there in most
places. Satellite is not really the answer. The relatively low speeds
and high cost and latency makes them unviable.

As you will see from my original posting I don't believe that there is
any intention of providing a remotely comparable service outside of
towns. I am encouraged that you think there will be money for community
enterprises.

I later made the point that rural areas subsidise the cities and it is
not unreasonable to expect some subsidy in the opposite direction for
such as data transmission. This might answer your valid point about
maintenance costs not being met by income. We now have a generation that
has never known other than Thatcherite 'thinking' about the infinite
'wisdom' of the market. There are areas where the market is
inappropriate and this is one of them. Don't get me wrong. I remember
the bad old days of waiting six months to get a phone line. Privatising
BT was mostly a great idea. But as enormous sums of tax revenue are
pumped into rail, a similar case can be made for money to be put into
the data system. Indeed more people use the Internet than trains.

My point about lower charges for lower speeds was not entirely serious.
However whilst suppliers can say 'well they've now got broadband so stop
whining' (not mentioning the increasing differential in speeds), the
future problems become hidden. Yes there are many inefficient web sites
that soak up bandwidth. IT was ever thus. Just take a look at
Microsoft's bloatware! Back in the 80s who would have thought that PCs
would need to store digital photos each of which would take up more than
entire hard disk of 10Mb? Why on earth do we need bus speeds higher than
1MHz? The Internet is a wonderful resource that enables business and
draws people together nationally and across the world. It must not be
throttled in its application by failure to invest.

Peter Scott

Rural broadband speeds
 

Rural broadband speeds
 

Alan Braggins wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
the time?
Very complicated.
Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic
and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits.
And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line.

As he was already suggesting.

No he wsn't He was suggesting that te combination of a

a twin NIC windows box
a neighbour some unspeified distance away

was a magic solution for bandwidth.

Well it isn't.

Rural broadband speeds
 

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.

Rural broadband speeds
 

Dave Liquorice wrote:
I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.


Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?

Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
laying that kills you.

Rural broadband speeds
 

Rural broadband speeds
 

Rural broadband speeds
 

Huge wrote:
On 2009-01-08, wrote:

Another thing that can be done is to have the local server cache as
much as possible with a big disc, then revisits to pages load real
fast, plus all the reused elements of new pages on the same site.

I already do this; I run a squid proxy.

Perhaps slow rural speeds is a blessing
in that it will encourage many businesses to create less bloated
sites.

Won't happen. Web sites are designed by gel-haired, oddly bespectacled weirdoes
dressed all in black with perfect eyesight and huge monitors connected to their
servers with gigabit ethernet. That's why so many of them are crap. Someone
pointed me at a "5 a day" video this morning on an HMG website; it's 176Mb. Like
I'm going to wait 30 or 40 minutes for *that* to download.

I resent that. Apart from the bespectacled weirdo bit.

My eyesight is crap and I never wear black, and never use gel.

Rural broadband speeds
 

The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

Dave Liquorice wrote:
I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.


Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?

Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
laying that kills you.

What happened to mesh WIFI deployment?

I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well
and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as
needed).

If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few
hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink.

That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get
a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance
of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a
couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer
to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous
might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including
taking a supply.

It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the
Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be
advantageous.

Wonder if any village has done this?

I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh
mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes
woks) as signal directors.

Cheers

Tim

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 08:57:38 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson wrote:
In article ,
Bruce wrote:

In the meantime, here's a practical alternative:
http://www.avcbroadband.com/

Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The
endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing
if you're patient. Web sites seem to have gone overboard a bit again,
however I was at the end of a 512Kb ADSL line ysterday for a bit, and yes,
it really felt slow, but it was more than usable with a bit of patience.

Prices may have dropped, but have you seen the (frankly unusable) data
limits? 1GB before they start to drop your speed from 512Kbit/sec.
If you're unhappy with a 750kbit/sec landline speed, then I can't see
that a 1Gbyte limit will last long. You certainly couldn't run a web-
based business with such a poor and expensive service agreement.

Rural broadband speeds
 

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote:
I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.


Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?

Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
laying that kills you.

I did this for real some years back. Supported 3 communities in
Devon & Cornwall via Wi-Fi. 2 companies went bust trying to make it
work. (fortunately I just staff/contractor) I only kept it going with
a grant before BT enabled the exchanges...

It really wasn't financially viable. Probably still isn't. Our biggest
hit was the installation because we did it properly with outdoor kit,
proper line of sight and so on. We had to pay farmers, and others for
the use of their roof-tops to put the kit on, then getting in a 10Mb
backhaul feed wasn't cheap. (Neither was the kit to send that signal
17.5Km via a 5.8Ghz link to the local head ends)

You can bodge it with mesh, indoor antennae and so on, but it won't be
reliable with no guarantees of service, limited bandwidth, and so on.

Ah well, those were the days. Money up-front if I ever had to do it again.

Gordon

Rural broadband speeds
 

Tim S wrote:
The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

Dave Liquorice wrote:
I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.

Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?

Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
laying that kills you.

What happened to mesh WIFI deployment?


Not cost effective versus BT copper basically.

If people were prepared to sign up to £30 a month for high speed
broadband, many things would be possible.

With people offering deals at £15 or less, its not worth raising capital
for.

Wifi only covers the last couple of hundred yards at best anyway. - you
still have top lay fibre or tight beam microwave TO it. And it congests
fast.



I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well
and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as
needed).

If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few
hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink.


Yup. Its doable if thats what people want.

But you need s strong technically competent local team to do it.


That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get
a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance
of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a
couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer
to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous
might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including
taking a supply.

You can get anything of BT/ISP's if you pay for it. 2Mbps to your house
rock solid 1:1 contention ration and zero throttling..for a mere 12k a
year or so.



It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the
Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be
advantageous.

Wonder if any village has done this?


WE tried, but it was doomed. BT imply saw where the interest was, and
broadband enabled the villages that looked like their act was getting
together. At silly prices as hey get their backhaul at trade prices..


I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh
mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes
woks) as signal directors.


Woks are good, yes.



Cheers

Tim

Rural broadband speeds
 

In article ,
Tim S wrote:
The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

Dave Liquorice wrote:
I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.


Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?

Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
laying that kills you.

What happened to mesh WIFI deployment?

I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well
and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as
needed).

And that's the crux of the proble. It was costing us £200+ to do each
install and the punters would not pay that. You need people with insurance
and ladders - specially if you're going to drill into peoples houses. We
used local sky installers and they weren't cheap. Do it yourself, crack
some external render/plasterwork and you've suddenly got something more
to wory about than just putting a cable through the wall...

If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few
hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink.

And one p2p'er will kill the lot.

That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get
a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance
of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a
couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer
to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous
might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including
taking a supply.

We got just over 100 people (out of 1800 houses) to put their names on
a bit of paper in one town. This was after running an 18-month funded
project to raise awareness and research the effects of broadband in a
rural community. Then barely 50 committed to the install of £99, which
was less than half what it was really costing. Our first customers
cheque bounced on us. Then trying to get £25 a month out of them was
like pulling swords out of stone )-:

On paper, 50 customers at £25 looks good, but the running costs (without
staff) were close to £1000 a month - to buy the backhaul, pay for space
on the masts and farmers, etc.)

It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the
Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be
advantageous.

Wonder if any village has done this?

Do yourself a favour and don't do it.

I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh
mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes
woks) as signal directors.

You don't need woks - I recently did help a friend in Wales as it happens,
to get a link to his neighbour about a mile away - good line of sight at
roof-top level using older, but good outdoor kit with flat-plate antennae.
(smartBridges kit)

The longest wi-fi link we ran was 6.5 miles in Cornwall using a standard
12db omni at the access point and and an 18db grid parabolic antennae
at the client end. Good line of sight though - client was uphill from
the base.

Gordon

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:59:44 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
laying that kills you.

IIRC our backhaul (5Mbps symmetrical with allowed bursts to 10Mbps no
useage limits) costs 10k+/year for 300 customers. £33/year/customer or two
months subs at our top rate. Trouble is most of our subs are at £8/month
not £18. After the backhaul cost there is about £30k to pay for the full
time admin and network maintenace staff (one of each) plus network
maintenance and all the other on going costs like site/office rental,
power, marketing, not forgetting a sinking fund to upgrade/replace the
network infrastructure after say 5 years. Though with fibre that might not
be so pressing, our network is now 6/7 years old based on WiFi and is
creaking both from increased traffic levels and equipment failure due to
age.

Of course if you have people volunteer to do the admin/network maintenance
for free from home that helps an awful lot but possibly with quite an
impact if the network dies and your volunteer is busy doing their paid day
job.

The chances are you would get grant funding for the capital outlay
associated with digging holes, installing servers, and possibly the first
12 months backhaul costs. What you won't get funding for is all those
ongoing costs, like the backhaul after the 1st 12 months...

Yes, a "village ISP" is viable, there are plenty of places with such self
help systems in place but the economics can be a bit border line.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:53:53 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

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

If jointing the fibre no, that is a skilled and time consuming process. If
the lenghts aren't particulary long it's probably easier to blow the old
ones out and new ones in.

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

DTH needs one fibre cable per home/end point back to a "hub". Another way
of distributing the connections is fibre to "good site(s)" then wireless
as the final link. You can get reliable wireless stuff these days that
doesn't use 2.5GHz (WiFi and loads of other stuff) and will give speeds to
a few tens of Mbps over decent distances. Personally I'd want to put in
DTH fibre with development grant support.

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

Find suitable places with mains, install your kit there, give the owners a
free connection as payment.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:41:51 +0000, Peter Scott wrote:

If BT were to do the cabling then they would use their own poles of
course and they are already there in most places.

But you'd need to provide the arms and legs of all your customers to pay
for it. Anyway I don't think BT would do it. If they are going to fibre an
area why do it for some one else when they could do it for themselves and
get the income from that work.

You do it, own the network and sell capacity to content providers.

I am encouraged that you think there will be money for community
enterprises.

I don't think I know there is money available. What I think is that there
is going to be even more money available in the not too distant future.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Rural broadband speeds
 

On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 12:55:54 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson wrote:

And one p2p'er will kill the lot.

Yep, when we put our network in there was no bandwidth or useage limit.
One or two people then started to hog the bandwidth and effectively
denying everyone else access to the internet. We had to introduce a scale
of tarrifs with different bandwidth limits, still true unlimited useage
though.

The longest wi-fi link we ran was 6.5 miles ...

We have several backbone links of that length and a couple considerably
longer. 24" dishes each end for the long hops, yagis in tubes for shorter
ones.

--
Cheers
Dave.