Fujikura 12S
This last few weeks B4RN volunteers have been test driving the new Fujikura 12S in the fields, and the homes in Rural England. With sheep. And Tea. Fujikura are very kindly loaning this splicer to B4RN for a few weeks because we only have one splicer and the diggers and farmers are digging like mad and its a job to keep up with them! The volunteers are busy blowing the fibre and installing equipment in homes and businesses. It’s all go at the moment and with lambing time looming everyone has a push on. On one row in Arkholme of the 40 properties all but 5 took a connection, with 32...
Read More“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley”
The first connections at Arkholme were due to go live before Christmas, but nature had other ideas. As the title of this post suggests, things did not go to plan but many lessons have been learnt and solutions found. We hope others can benefit from these experiences and this is the start of our ‘Lessons Learnt’ section. We will post here each time we come up against a problem to share our findings. This was a particularly hard lesson for us. We had all worked so hard to get live for Christmas, and to fall at the last hurdle was gutting. We soon realised that this was in fact a...
Read MoreNew Year. New Connections.
Happy New Year to all who read this. A few days off for the B4RN community, sadly the bad weather did not have any time off over Christmas! Now it is back to it as this new video shows. One of the priority tasks for the team now is to connect up the individual properties to the fibre core. This is done by using the specialised fusion splicing equipment that B4RN owns. Very meticulous work and a bit fiddly, especially with cold fingers and a gale blowing but as you can see, the job is getting done. Fusing, the video: As always, this work would not be possible without the many committed...
Read MoreDecember newsletter and Thank You
Thank You from B4RN Thanks to you all for your support this past year, and what a year it has been. A year ago we had only just launched our shares! The B4RN management committee would like to thank many individually but there are far too many, so we’ll categorise it a bit. Thanks to all the farmers and landowners who have let the diggers on their land despite the appalling conditions and had faith in us to make as little mess as possible and make it good afterwards. Thanks to the farmers who have done their own digging too, and those who have helped us get under walls and tracks,...
Read MoreFusion Splicing in Arkholme
“Twas on a Monday morning…” Many people have offered to help us in exchange for shares in B4RN. One of these was Lee, from Core Precision. He came to visit us on Monday and because it was fine weather for a change we ‘kidnapped’ him and he did some fusion for us. A man of grit. He had no wellies, so we put a fibre mat down (notice the brand name on the mat and you’ll see the fibre pun), but it wasn’t very effective as you can see from the video! His wife Shalini posted on Facebook that he trailed our mud all through her lovely house… oops. She...
Read MoreBBC Radio Lancashire – B4RN First Connections
More New Skills: Fleeting and Blowing the Fibre
First and foremost, apologies to all for the slight issue with the website earlier this week. It has now been resolved. Some viewers of our Facebook page may have seen this already but if you haven’t then here is one of the latest videos of the activity taking place in the village of Arkholme. This village is leading the way with the B4RN network deployment and skill with many never new they needed are being learnt and utilised for the good of the community. In this video you can see members of the community blowing and fleeting the fibre. Fleeting is a technique used to lay the...
Read MoreAcronym Overload? What does it all mean?
FTTH, FTTC, ADSL, VDSL, Mbps, Gbps, WiFi….STOP!!!! While more and more people are coming round to the idea that having good broadband is a huge advantage, not many people know the jargon. Do we want to? Probably not and nor should we need to. After all, what we need is reliable, affordable, future proof connectivity and that is what B4RN will provide. However for the curious amongst us here is a great little video from the FTTH Council of Europe that explains all of the terms so we can all sounds like the experts in just over two minutes! In addition here is an article that gives some...
Read MoreArkholme Core Route Duct Dig Photos
Update, Monday 1st October, 7 hours late… But the dig is done. The core duct to Arkholme digital parish hub is now finished, and fibre will be blown shortly. All the photos on flickr and our facebook page. Followers of the B4RN project will already know that the digging in of the fibre ducting is well underway thanks to the outstanding work by many members of the community. The weather has not been kind to us this “summer” and this has caused understandable delays. However it has not stopped work as has been demonstrated over the last week or so in the Arkholme area. Part of...
Read MoreAbbeystead Village Hall Dig
There is a lot of activity from the various community teams around the B4RN area. The latest has been this weekend in the picturesque hamlet of Abbeystead. Some may recall that this was the village that suffered the tragedy where 16 people lost their lives and 28 were injured in the pumping station explosion on the evening of 23 May 1984. The video here shows the team working to lay duct to the stunning village hall and demonstrates the equipment available to the B4RN team, most notably the ground radar that provides a much more detailed view of what is underground allowing digging to take...
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