Yesterday’s The One Show included a great report on B4RN. The film crew were in the area for the whole day and they have compressed the footage into a 5 minute report, which for prime time TV is a sizeable slot.
The report features interviews with
Andrew Metcalfe, a local farmer.
Christine Conder, B4RN Committee Member.
Brendan Dick, Managing Director, BT Regions at BT.
Barry Forde, CEO B4RN.
It also features clips from the Inaugural Dig Event made by local film producer John Hamlett.
BT’s Brendan Dick, who was interviewed on top of Jubilee Tower overlooking the B4RN area said providing fibre broadband to this area would be “a big challenge given the very disperse population” and “there’s not enough people“. When asked why BT cannot provide fibre service here Mr Dick said he’d “love to be able to do the whole of the UK but economics just kick in“. As the reporter rightly said, BT is not a charity, which is absolutely correct. Credit has to go to Mr Dick for his honest statement.
Christine Conder stated when asked why B4RN can do this when BT cannot, she replied, “the power of the farmers“. That being the whole community pulling together digging, publicising, granting free wayleaves and so on.
Barry Forde stated that the speed will be “500 times the government target” and will be good for “the next few decades“.
Following the report, Dragon’s Den, Hilary Devey said it was “fabulous” and she was “going to take the concept to Marakesh”
Overall it was an excellent report for B4RN and shows what can be done when a community pulls together. The first properties are due to be connected on July 14th.
Here is the video.
Here are some photos taken from the day’s filming.
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It was interesting to note that Brendan Dick, Managing Director, BT Regions at BT questioned the longer term support of the B4RN project. He is perhaps overlooking the comments from Barry Forde (and the former BT Chief Technical Officer Peter Cochrane) that fibre has a much lower maintenance cost as it does not suffer from moisture ingress nor the wear and tear on ageing twisted pairs with many many joints.
Contrast that with a brand new FTTC customer request for a service in Hitherwood on the Cranleigh exchange. Only on the appointment day does the engineer test the line to discover a battery fault i.e. the line is in contact with another circuit. Although the engineer can test the line he is not allowed to find the fault and cancels the installation. The customer is obliged to contact the BT call centre himself to have the fault repaired before the installation engineer can be re-booked to try again.