BT And Council Deliver Fibre To Kent Village

Residents in a village in Kent used funding from their local council to get BT to rollout fibre broadband to their village.

In an effort to secure a fibre connection to their village, which BT had already determined was not commercially viable, the Parish Council of Iwade obtained a £13,000 grant from Kent County Council.

“This funding, plus another £62,000 from BT, was used to deliver Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) services to four street cabinets in the village, from the neighbouring telephone exchange in Sittingbourne, which has already been selected for an upgrade to fibre broadband by BT,” said a BT spokeswoman.

She explained that by Autumn 2010, all 1,350 homes and businesses in Iwade will have access to fibre broadband speeds of up to 40Mb/s.

Rural Broadband Costs

BT however warned that it will only consider locations situated near to exchanges that have already been targeted for fibre services. And it said that some technical restrictions apply, such as the need for local homes and businesses to be within 1km of its telephone cabinets.

Back in April, a village in Rutland was also connected to fibre after the community-run Rutland Telecom raised £37,000 to add its own a cabinet to the BT network. This meant that the residents of Lyddington are able to get an average 25Mbps (around ten times the UK average).

When asked about the price difference between the two cases, the BT spokesman insisted that costs depend on individual circumstances of the particular region.

“There are providers other than BT trying to deliver fibre to rural areas, which is something we welcome,” the BT spokeswoman told eWEEK Europe UK. “However one thing to bear in mind is that these other providers don’t offer fibre on a wholesale basis (i.e. allow others to share their network). When we go into new areas, we are bringing competition with us,” she said.

In the Iwade case, the money that has been raised will be used to install four new FTTC cabinets, which are slighter larger than the normal cabinet. These are the same cabinets that several conservation groups in the sea-side city of Brighton complained about, earlier this month.

“The reason they are bigger than conventional cabinets is that they house more electronics for the fibre,” said the spokeswoman.

BT is already investing £2.5 billion to deliver fibre based broadband to two-thirds of the UK by 2015, but Iwade did not feature in BT’s fibre roll-out plans previously as according to BT, “the commercial case for deploying fibre in less densely populated areas is very challenging.”

Local Partnerships

“BT has already announced plans to bring fibre broadband to two thirds of UK homes and businesses by 2015 but we want to do more if we can. Our investment is one of the biggest commercial investments in fibre in the world and we are prepared to invest further if others are prepared to work with us,” said Steve Robertson, CEO of Openreach. “Our partnership with Iwade is a great example of this and we’re very keen to work with other parts of the country on similar projects.”

“As a Broadband Committee we have worked hard to reach this critical point, giving Iwade residents and businesses the option to sign up to super-fast broadband at such an early stage,” said Nicola McKenzie, broadband committee co-ordinator for Iwade Parish Council. “Local homes and businesses are relying more and more on broadband internet services. The faster connections offered by fibre broadband will allow local people to get even more out of their broadband connection.”

Amongst many homes and businesses in the area which stand to benefit from the technology is the local nursery, which will allow parents to use a webcam service to keep an eye on their children throughout the day.