Solution
Mike and his team’s initial 2 Mb/s Wi-Fi enterprises met a number of short-term needs but the Directors were becoming increasingly keen to build on his small access network and so they embarked on the next stage of its development.
In 2008, Alan Denton, the Technical Director, engaged FluidOne to put in place a private ADSL circuit which would run on FluidOne’s powerful network. Along with a number of partners, VillageBroadband investigated a number of options, analysing a selection of providers against their specific requirements.
Dr Goldsmith said: “The solution had to be really flexible, provide us with ADSL, and not limit me to being able to commercialise VillageBroadband in the future – we had found that some of the larger network operators were particularly restrictive about this. We also wanted to work with a company that puts its customers first, rather than the bottom line, and so we found FluidOne to match these criteria, along with the strength of its network, which made them a natural partner.”
The team at VillageBroadband chose FluidOne to provide a 20 Mb/s ADSL line from which they could start to develop their own ingenious Wi-Fi network. Once FluidOne’s ADSL connection was in place, Mike and his team found a building in Wellingborough (six miles away), near the telephone exchange, and tall enough to transmit a signal back to Strixton with clear line of sight. With a successful wireless connection achieved, Village Broadband began to provide an average of 4 – 5 Mb/s from FluidOne’s one 20 Mb/s line
“Five years ago, we were routinely providing five to 10 Mb/s in the downstream and one to two up – much more than bigger companies can provide even now. Our next challenge was to start to crank up the speed to meet the demand that our residents and businesses were now showing for quicker broadband.”
As the service started to gain popularity, it started to become overstretched and, as a result, unreliable. During busy periods, the service would stutter and, sometimes, fail. Increased consumption of video was seen as a real factor, as well as data-heavy activity from some local businesses. Mike began looking for a more powerful and scalable cable solution to meet this increased demand.
In September 2012, FluidOne started providing Village Broadband with 100 Mb/s superfast broadband via FluidOne’s fibre network. The cable comes into the farm and business park where VillageBroadband moved into the company’s new home, a local business park in Strixton, just 100 yards from where they used to be based and is then beamed wirelessly via a 5 GHz wireless network, transmitted from the farm in Strixton to Wollaston then to the surrounding villages. 3,500 residents and businesses are now able to receive, on average, a minimum of 10 Mb/s and many have 15 Mb/s, up and down, on VillageBroadband’s wireless WAN.
VillageBroadband has a tiered pricing and access structure:
Up to 10 Mb/s = £24 per month – suitable for residential usage Up to 15 Mb/s = £30 per month – suitable for residential users or very small SMEs who need better bandwidth Up to 20 Mb/s = £45–300 per month- suitable for larger businesses who need up to 70 gigabytes a month usage Up to 30 Mb/s = £300-700 per month- suitable for data-heavy industries VillageBroadband also offers a Fibre Direct option which retails at £1200- £1500 per month depending on specific requirements.This is being looked at seriously by Parish Councils who wish to provide services to their villages wirelessly.
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Our business ADSL uses ADSL2+ technology to achieve download speeds of 20Mbps, whilst providing upload speeds of 2.6Mbps.
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