How We Build

At B4RN we don’t simply plough headlong into projects. We have a specified process where we work together with our volunteer groups through the below phases to ensure we are delivering a robust, sustainable and financially viable project.

When a new community on the edge of our coverage area wishes to be connected, we ask them to raise investment and gain support to cover the expansion alongside government support from DSIT. With the help of local volunteers and landowners we establish viable routes and wayleaves, then lay small 16mm ducts in that new area either by trench or mole-ploughing. Fibre optic cable is then fed down these ducts in a process called ‘blowing’.

Often we will need to site a ‘node’ cabinet in the new community; these are custom built secure outdoor enclosures and usually sited on the grounds of a Village Hall or local school. These local nodes are always connected by two feeds into the wider network, offering resilience and continued service even if one of the feeds is interrupted.

Further 16mm ducts are installed around the community to a number of inconspicuously buried chambers in which we place junction boxes called ‘bullets’. From these bullets a very small 7mm duct is laid to each and every property requesting service. Once fibre is blown into this duct and its connections ‘spliced’, a property can go live at 1000Mbps!

Most of our ducts are laid deep under agricultural land, but we regularly license roadworks where necessary, cross railways, motorways, canals and have even crossed under the Lune with Environment Agency approved directional drilling.

We can continue expanding the B4RN network to many times its current size with no compromise to the quality or speed of users’ connections. This is due to the amazing bandwidth capacity of fibre, and the professional, world class design of our network.

We separate our process into 4 phases: Feasibility, Development, Delivery and Infill.