Press Release Monday 28th January 2013 (no embargo):
B4RN Connect Bring Your Own Device Demonstration Day
B4RN celebrates the first live connections in Arkholme with a public demonstration event day on February 14th at the Village Hall, Kirkby Lonsdale Road, Arkholme, LA6 1AU, starting at 1pm and ending at 8pm, 1:30pm opening presentation by Barry Forde with repeat presentations at 3.30 and 5.30.
B4RN has passed another major milestone this month. B4RN is now live in the second village (the first was Quernmore in October), with the first people connected very happy with the service. “As one of the first customers all I can say is that the service is fantastic – no more waiting for the buffering to catch up. It just works, switch on and things load instantly. I can now watch iplayer in HD on the TV without a flicker. Fantastic.” says Bruce Alexander, Quernmore
“As requested, the new speed test after having cleared the “blockage” at my end – simply marvellous – I could spend all day re-running these!” Brian Acott, Arkholme.
Broadband 4 the Rural North, or B4RN, is a community-owned, rural, gigabit Fibre To The Home project. In order to demonstrate what can be done with such fast connections, B4RN is holding a drop in demonstration day on Thursday 14th February at Arkholme Village Hall between 13:00 and 20:00. The village hall will be live with the B4RN service and people are invited to bring their own devices and connect them up to this hyperfast service.
There will be a key presentation at 1.30 launching this event, and presentations throughout the afternoon and evening along with the chance to chat to the B4RN team over a cup of tea and homemade biscuits. There will be other equipment on view that will demonstrate what the B4RN connection is capable of, such as Smart TVs, video conferencing, YouView TV, Smartphones, tablets and CCTV webcams.
B4RN is the only UK community offering gigabit broadband, meaning that consumers will have the opportunity to work, live and play faster and more efficiently than most places in the world. This forward-thinking, fully-fibred approach has been recognised as the optimal solution to the digital divide, and will encourage regeneration of this deeply rural area, bringing new jobs, opportunities and revenue to rural Lancashire.
Prof. Forde stated, “The support of the local community has been key to B4RN’s success to date, and there are many people and businesses within the area who are earning their shares through sweat and labour as well as investing their money.”
Full details of the project with many videos on progress are available on http://www.B4RN.org.uk along with maps of the coverage area and phases.
NOTES TO EDITORS
- B4RN has been more than three years in the planning and development stage. The B4RN project will bring a state of the art, fibre optic broadband connection to the rural communities long before most of the urban areas. Rural Lancashire plans to be a world leader in “hyperfast”.
- B4RN is deploying a 100% fibre optic broadband connection, capable of delivering 1Gbs (1000Mbs) both upload and download. The cost is £150 one off connection fee and £30 per month subscription. B4RN will provide internet access with further services in the future. Each home will have a battery backup so telephony over the fibre means landline connections are no longer required
- Professor Barry Forde (B4RN Chief Executive) is a networking expert with many years experience of designing, building and operating high performance networks. He was responsible for the CLEO network which provides connectivity to over 1000 schools and public sector sites across Lancashire and Cumbria. Bios are available for Professor Forde and the Management team http://b4rn.org.uk/management-team
- The full business plan is available on the website, along with details of the pricing and payment structure for local residents and businesses.http://b4rn.org.uk/business-plan
- The local businesses demonstrating at the event are Tooby’s of Ingleton, Black Box Computers of Lancaster and TIER ONE electronics.
Photos (to be accredited to B4RN) are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/b4ruralnorth
Contact details: Professor Barry Forde, b.forde@B4RN.org.uk
Christine Conder, c.conder@B4RN.org.uk
Telephone: 01524 555887 (answerphone) or mobile: 07952 503253
Twitter: @dig2agig
Website: http://www.B4RN.org.uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/B4
6 Comments
Awesome – just awesome. I’ll try and find a reason to be there on the day.
try hard, it will be great to see you again a year down the line and you can meet some happy people.
Brilliant! Just what we’ve been waiting for! (apart from a connection of course…) I’m going to send out a newsshet to fellow Aughton-ites to make sure they know ALL about it!
Great, thanks Hilary, if they come and try it out they will see what they have been missing and dig all the harder…
The hall was speedtested on the private wifi today, 70 meg symmetrical! Wifi can never be as fast as a wired connection to the equipment, but this wifi is faster than most connections in the whole country, yet its a fraction of what your real B4RN connection can do. If you want to see a short film made during the test just visit the B4RN facebook page, and on the Valentine Day event the wifi will be opened to the public so you can try it for yourselves. Bring your own devices and give it a go, you will love it.
Well done all of you. Paraphrasing in reverse the former BT CTO, Peter Cochrane, “This is one of the BEST decisions humanity has made” for B4RN. It really is a special day and I shall enjoy meeting many of you again to hear of your successes in more detail. Let’s hope that the weather this year will be a lot kinder than last so you can “Join the dots” leading to an increased reliability with a fully redundant dual diverse route around rural Lancashire. Another benefit most of the domestic UK will not achieve for decades ??? to come.
Just to remind you of the impoverished in Surrey, some delightful gentlemen removed nearly 600 m of 3 large copper cables at 03:29 on 16 january 2013 which took until 12:04 on 24 January (in the snow) to replace and reconnect around 1500 lines. Some had to wait until 28 january for their services. Almost everybody lost their phone and ADSL broadband services, and all the alarm systems. The only remaining ones were the few on VDSL fibre connections, but thieves aren’t always that selective, even though melted glass is valueless. Yet another, probably unnoticed, design benefit for your excellent enterprise.