<http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file47788.pdf>
Ahi se citan proyectos de inciativa pública para cobertura de fibra óptica en UK. -------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- Además: <http://www.broadband.coop/Ensuring-rural-inclusion/Alston-Fibremoor.html> While it is unclear where line will be drawn when determining who gets Next Generation services and who doesn't, it is certain that the market will deem some areas uneconomic to install fibre-optic cabling. Developing an understanding of alternative models - both technical and commercial - will be critical for the public sector to understand what interventions may become necessary and where if the UK is to avoid a new Digital Divide. The Cumbrian parish of Alston is one of the most sparsely populated areas of England. When first generation broadband was being deployed by BT, it was unsurprisingly one of the areas initially deemed nonviable. This precipitated Cybermoor, among the first community-run broadband projects in the UK, and today they remain the top provider of first generation services to the area. Fully expecting to be on the wrong side of any investment decisions for Next Generation broadband, Cybermoor is looking to maintain their pioneering position by investigating the opportunities for fibre-optic technologies. CBN was commissioned to write a feasibility study, looking at the potential network architectures and business models that might support Next Generation services on Alston Moor. This is much more than just a desire to be at the forefront of a technology movement, Cybermoor recognises that delivering public services to such remote areas is expensive and increasingly difficult to sustain. As a social enterprise "pathfinder" with the NHS, having access to a super-fast broadband platform will enable improved services to the area at a reduced cost to taxpayers. -- Y también: <> Super-fast rural comms needn't be super costly Malcolm Corbett Published: 30 Jan 2009 15:40 GMT Some commentators say the talk about 'broadband for everyone' is all very well, but it will cost a fortune to roll out to rural areas. But it does not need to be vastly expensive, says community broadband expert Malcolm Corbett. The small market town of Alston in rural Cumbria is an unlikely setting for a revolutionary next-generation broadband project. Lying at the confluence of the Nent and South Tyne rivers, and surrounded by beautiful moorland, Alston is perhaps most famous for appearances in films such as Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist. Yet it is here in Alston, the most sparsely populated parish in England, that the local community has determined to set up a fibre infrastructure connecting all premises in the town and nearby hamlets, with wireless hops to some of the more remote farmhouses. They plan 100 percent coverage with a network capable of delivering 100Mbps symmetric connections. In the week that the government's Digital Britain interim report highlights some of the problems with rural broadband coverage, how can Alston be so audacious as to assume it can do something many commentators think impossibly uneconomic? The answer lies in part in the town's broadband history. In the early noughties, refusing to accept that ADSL and therefore broadband were somewhere over the far horizon, Daniel Heery, a local social entrepreneur — with equal emphasis on both words — set up Alston Cybermoor. This experiment was one of the first community broadband ventures, and Heery set about raising money, organising the community and investigating technology. >From this hard work emerged the Cybermoor wireless network, connecting all parts of the community and bringing low-cost broadband to the population, years ahead of ADSL. Today the Cybermoor network is used by well over one-third of the local population, even though ADSL did finally arrive. >From Cybermoor to Fibremoor However, Heery is not the type to stand still. Last year he started thinking the impossible. Could Alston Cybermoor be turned into Alston Fibremoor? He turned to the co-operative enterprise I work for, the Community Broadband Network. It was a tall order: 938 households with a population density of 6.3 homes per square-kilometre — the English average is 157 per square-kilometre; a requirement for 100 percent coverage of the town, hamlets and the moorland farms; end-user pricing about the same as people pay now — that is, no price premium; plus with no possibility of reusing existing infrastructure — Cybermoor owns no telecoms street cabinets, poles or ducts. How close to a viable commercial model could it get? The answer is pretty close if you make certain assumptions about take-up, financing and design. Cybermoor already has a strong local brand with good take-up in the community, and it can organise demand. With financing, if you start from the assumption that the fibre will be in the ground for 25 years — and probably 40 years — the project lends itself to utility-style financing and returns. As for design, an intelligent network architecture coupled with the use of local contractors keeps the costs down. It turns out that with a comparatively small amount of public subsidy this project can fly. Local residents can benefit from super-fast broadband with the line rental for the fibre costing about the same as the existing copper. As we debate current and next-generation rural broadband coverage, the question for the politicians behind the Digital Britain report is whether this and similar models can be replicated elsewhere. Does it make sense to focus public expenditure on make-do-and-mend approaches to rural 'notspots' and 'slowspots', or should we instead seek to develop next-generation solutions that will future-proof those areas? I think we should pursuing next-generation solutions. After all, if a credible case for next-generation access in Alston can be constructed, surely it can be done anywhere. Malcolm Corbett is chief executive of the Community Broadband Network, a co-operative enterprise set up in 2003 to support community broadband initiatives. -------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- Sobre FibreMoor, bastante interesante, yo diría que el artículo más interesante Ah, tiene video con zanjas y tal... :__D <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8034437.stm> A tale of two broadband villages By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, BBC News Advertisement Rory Cellan-Jones discovers a broadband boost for Cumbria Cumbria is a microcosm of counties across the UK, many of which still have some "notspot" areas - defined as places that have no or below two megabits per second broadband. Lindsey Annison has been campaigning for faster online connections for her rural community in Cumbria for over 20 years. She is one of an estimated 15% of the UK population who cannot get speeds above 2Mbps. The problem, a common one for rural communities, is that her village is just too far away from its local telephone exchange to offer the kind of speeds the government has pledged everyone will have by 2012. "On a really good day I can get a 1Mbps connection but you can't do anything with it. I can't use Skype for example," she said. The fact she can achieve even this is down to help she has got from a firm which specialises in getting more broadband out of lines that are a long way from telephone exchanges. "Outlying farms can't get anything," she said. Graphic of a house What will deliver next-generation broadband? Are you in a broadband notspot? Ofcom estimates that 15% of the population cannot get broadband above 2Mbps. In Northern Ireland nearly a third of homes can't get 2Mbps and in Scotland over a quarter languish on slow speeds. Cumbria has by no means been bypassed by the digital revolution. Last year the North West regional development agency spent £19m on a county-wide wireless network and running fibre to a deprived estate near Carlisle. But, according to Ms Annison, it has been a failure. "It hasn't made the slightest bit of difference. I haven't found anyone in Cumbria who is getting a connection off of that wireless network," she said. This is disputed by the North West Development Agency (NWDA), which was responsible for laying the network. It said that the network had benefitted around 40,000 businesses in the area as well as enabling consumers. "Before, only 40% of Cumbria could get half a meg of broadband but now 96% can. People can get significantly better access, up to 2Mb in some instances," said Phil Southward of the NWDA. Fibre moor Daniel Heery Daniel Heery has become a type of fibre warrior The money could have been better spent on fibre, said Andrew Ferguson, editor of ThinkBroadband. Fibre is expensive but there are ways of cutting costs. "Community led approaches things like a farmer lending a day of time to dig trench can save a fortune. Alas, in a world of litigation and health and safety rules this may carry risks. They could damage an existing infrastructure, or cause an accident," he said. Just 15 miles across the hills from Ms Annison, Daniel Heery is preparing his own DIY fibre project. Locals Derek Snowden and Steven Ramsey are using their diggers to lay a four-mile trench between Alston and neighbouring Nenthead. Into that trench will go ducting through which fibre optic cable will be blown, bringing 50Mbps broadband to the hills of Cumbria for the first time. There are 1,000 homes in the area that could eventually benefit from the network although in the first instance just 20 houses will be connected by the end of the summer. Customers will have to pay £100 to upgrade their current connection, which offers a wireless connection running at speeds of up to 2Mbps. Long term prices have yet to be worked out although Mr Heery said the premium for the service "would not be astronomical". Rural Alston, surrounded by serene hills full of grazing cows, is perhaps an unlikely location for a fibre revolution but FibreMoor, as the project has been dubbed, is likely to be a model for other rural communities desperate to get faster broadband. "I think this type of community-led option will be the only option in rural areas. Local people can drive take-up levels. We have local people doing it and they will tell their mates and that kind of word-of-mouth will be vital," he said. It hasn't been an easy road for the FibreMoor project. Plans to sign up local schools and a nearby hospital hit a brick wall. "They haven't really been up for it. We explained that they could save money but these type of solutions are a bit more work than simply phoning up BT," he said. Despite reluctance to hook up local hospitals, the NHS as an organisation is stumping up a percentage of the £80,000 cost of laying the network. Virtual wards Nurse examining a patient Remote diagnostics will need fast broadband As well as being at the forefront of the digital revolution, Cumbria is also one of 80 so-called Living Labs around Europe, offering a testbed for cutting edge telemedicine. Researchers at Newcastle University are working on a pill which will have a camera attached to to beam back pictures of the body once swallowed. It may well be tested first in Alston once the fibre network is up and running And along the road at Cockermouth, Mr Heery is involved in a so-called virtual wards project, offering monitoring devices to patients so that doctors can do remote diagnostics rather than keeping people in hospital after operations. This currently relies on a standard broadband connection and the old-fashioned technology of the telephone. He hopes Lord Carter sees the value of community-led broadband as a way to increase remote services as well as help fill in the broadband notspots dotted around the UK. "We want to show that simply throwing money at the mobile operators isn't the best way to do it. My experience of mobile broadband is less than satisfactory and the idea of that being the panacea for Britain doesn't fill me with confidence," he said. "Put fibre in and it solves the problem for the next 20 or 30 years," he added. 2009/11/26 Ramon Roca <ramon.r...@guifi.net>: > > Clar que a ells els governs els ajuden. La diferència és que a nosaltres de > moment només ens diuen que ho faran. > http://www.baquia.com/noticias.php?id=15553 > > _______________________________________________ > guifi-usuaris mailing list > guifi-usuaris@llistes.projectes.lafarga.org > https://llistes.projectes.lafarga.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/guifi-usuaris >
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