Overview of B4GAL Community Broadband

Superfast Broadband for Glencaple and Lowther

Pronounced “bagel”

Amanda Burgauer, Community Broadband Scotland, Aviemore 24/4/2013

Project Beginnings

Lack of connectivity identified in 2010 as an issue by local community, but considered out of our control (Glencaple and Lowther Local Community Led Plan)

Brought forward again as top priority at community consultation in April 2012 (Elvanfoot Residents Association)

Broadband project initiated June 2012

B4GAL Community Broadband established Oct 2012 - working group of Glencaple & Lowther Development Group

Remote Rural Southern Scotland

Nearest Town > 10,000 pop is Hamilton, about 45-60 minutes away

Our Area – Glencaple and Lowther Nine villages: Abington,

Crawford, Crawfordjohn, Elvanfoot, Lamington, Leadhills, Roberton, Wanlockhead, Wiston

Moorland with settlements along the River Clyde and hilltops, mostly remote rural

Population around 2000

About 700 houses

Most work outside the area

Our Connectivity

4 local BT exchanges serve 9 villages: Crawford, Crawfordjohn, Elvanfoot and Lamington

Varies even within the same village

Elvanfoot Activate Exchange max 512 kbps download

Crawford and Leadhills exchanges max 8 Mbps but only a few can get it

Many isolated homes with NO connectivity

More than 6 km spread around each exchange

Community Engagement

Questionnaire

Posters and door to door

Public Meetings average one per month for past 12 months

Mapping names & addresses

Events

Technology Choices

Evaluation of technologies Superfast, next generation Sustainable Future proof

Optic Fibre Consultant hired to create network map

Backhaul identified

Costings complete

The Offering

Superfast broadband

Internet access

IP Telephony

IPTV

Security cameras

In future: Training, Telemedicine, Education

The Business

Application for charitable status – OSCR has accepted charitable purposes

Company limited by guarantee with Board of Directors

All profits to be spent within the Community

Business Plan created showing sustainability

Funding applications started

Next Steps

Fundraising: £1.47 million

Request for Proposals from civil engineering contractors

Procurement with community benefit, i.e. training opportunities

Digging in the optic fibre

Creation of pilot studies with NHS and UWS

Monitoring of social and economic benefit

Broadband and community resilience: Measuring impact

Fiona Heesen (fiona.heesen@abdn.ac.uk)

Pioneering Communities Seminar, April 24, 2013

Outline

Background

Resilience

Community broadband and resilience

Impact

Evaluating broadband

Background

Present Future

Rural resilience

Digital

services

EconomicsGeographyRural Planning

Community led

broadband

research

Past

Resilience

What is resilience? The ability for a community, group or individual to adapt to

change

Fig 1: Transitional ruptures, readjustment and recovery

From Wilson, 2012, p. 57

Community broadband

Two key stages to community-led broadband

1. Designing and developing the network

2. Implementation of technology

Relationship with resilience?

1. Use of Internet

2. Process-based capacity building

What is ‘impact’ and how do we measure it?

Impact can be broadly defined as: ‘the demonstrable contribution that a process or innovation

makes to society and the economy’

Measuring? Understanding impact metrics

Evaluation I

Understanding ‘real’ impact

Process Developing your outcome areas

Taking control of your research agenda and your story

Evaluation IICommunity Scale

Social Economic

Individual Scale

Social Economic

Research Process

• Users• Identify a community’s expectations of both the organisation and the inclusion of superfast broadband

infrastructure• Governance

• Identify skills needed, used, gained throughout the pre-connectivity process as a broadband initiativePre-connectivity

Interviews

Post-connectivity Interviews

• Users• Analyse the potential resilience attributed to the inclusion of superfast broadband

• Governance• Identify characteristics from the process of implementing superfast services that influence resilience of that

community

Background Context Setting

• Using secondary data, understand context (may involve surveys and so on)

Heesen, F. 2013

Community BroadbandScotland

Evaluating the CBS

programme

Importance of playmakers

Questions?

Optical Fibre in Community projects

Uses and Options

Anything is technically possible.

If you can afford it…….

Elementary……

To keep in mind………

This session is about Fibre

It’s good for you, but not too technical !

People tend to think of fibre like this…..

What is Fibre ?

But it’s not much use unless there is some equipment at each end.

You can add it yourself 1Gbps relatively cheap (per port) 10Gbps not so cheap 100Gps very expensive

Or you can rent the whole thing as a fibre based “product” 10Mbps 100Mbps 1000Mbps “the Gig”

What we like about fibre….

It has very high capacity (it’s fast) It is very reliable. It is immune to electro-magnetic

interference. It is not affected by weather. It is future proof.

What we don’t like about fibre…. There is not much of it about (that is

usable). It is expensive to install. The equipment that is needed to terminate

and use the fibre is expensive. This equipment must be housed somewhere

Which Means ….

It is deployed commercially where there will be a return on that high investment.

Core Networks (pretty much universal). Backhaul (Except in rural/remote areas). Access where the investment can be

made.

There is a technology called PON used for high density deployments – but we will ignore that for now……

So how does it work for communities? Crudely speaking - the more fibre the

better.

You probably wont have a core. It’s excellent as backhaul

Equally good mixed with high capacity wireless

Wonderful for access If you can afford it

Assume you have a wireless access network

Adding fibre backhaul will make it fly.

So where can I get some?

Backhaul

Dig in you own? ◦ From your network to where?

Or rent from a communications provider?◦ BT?◦ From your network to where?

Share with someone else?◦ A current CBS challenge◦ Where !?!!!

What can you afford?

A commercial operators Point of Presence (PoP)

A local business who might want to share?◦ They could share the cost of install and rental.

A public sector site? A work in progress! There’s lots to do here.

Where from is the question…

They have all the Broadband Ingredients◦ But no Cake.

◦ The ingredient you want is Ethernet Access Direct

◦ 10, 100Mb – 25KM radial distance. ◦ 1000Mb - 35KM radial distance

◦ But you’ll have to find the other ingredients…..

Getting a price from BTOR

Go to http://www.openreach.co.uk/pls/or_qq_owner/or_qq_frames.drawframe

◦ Enter the products you want and the postcodes of the a end and b end.

◦ The Installation price is subject to survey. ◦ But the rental is the key element with respect to

sustainability.

Getting a price from BTOR

Sharing a fibre

MPLS Cloud

www

VPN

Business VPN

Business Internet

www

100 Mbps fibre

Community8Km

Host Building

Fibre self dig

Practical Access by fibre

Covering off the access element.. A rare (but beautiful) form of community

project…. Is relatively future proof Has a more challenging business case…. But is generally viewed as “Future Proof”

A good example is B4RN in Lancashire Or the developing B4GAL project in South

Lanarkshire

Any Questions