We’re trying keep up with all the updates lately but there so much we’ve got to talk about! Things are going so fast its like reels of orange ducting are popping out of the ground in all sorts of places….. Here’s some recent “action” shots locally.
Birtley Village Hall now has full free public Wi-Fi coverage powered by B4RN – Broadband for the Rural North Ltd with kit supplied by North Tyne & Redesdale Community Partnership
The new service will allow hall users to get online and make better use of the hall for meetings etc. Being able to make a phone call from there today over WiFi Calling was amazing!
The system has a backup power supply which will keep the WiFi up and running for several hours in the event of a power cut meaning locals have somewhere to go to be able to check for updates online and keep on touch with friends and family.
This is the second such installation following on from Barrasford Village Hall which went live with the same system last October.
If you’re in Birtley come along to the hall and try out B4RN’s ultrafast gigabit service for yourself!
The main routes right the way from Birtley to Chollerton is now live with B4RN! This is HALF the main routes in the Barrasford Project (the yellow boundaries) and the mole ploughs are planning on continuing on to the main routes to the Kirkwhelpington and Woodburn Projects very soon.
Here’s a recent speed test from a resident in Birtley Village when one of our volunteers went live on his iPhone 8*’s WIFI!
More and more properties are coming live locally. Each yellow fibre cable below which is connected accounts for a property have gone live….the main cabinet is starting to get busy!
We’ve also been having meetings in Woodburn and Kirkwhelpington to let them know the mole ploughs are coming and to help get them ready.
About 100 people turned up to our Kirkwhelpington meeting and standing room only for our Woodburn meeting!
There’s wayleaves that will still need to be discussed and our volunteers are working hard to make sure the mole ploughs can continue unabound. Volunteers are giving up their free-time to bring us all one step away from digital rural poverty up to the world’s fastest rural broadband internet for every single property locally no matter how far away in the parishes. Also thanks so much to all the land owners big and small helping all of us with free wayleave access across their lands – they are all heroes in all this too!
There’s also been lots of investments come through for Barrasford and elsewhere which continues each week and we’re keeping the investment page above up to date for this – this keeps the project alive and makes sure if can reach every single property – remember this needs to be done before your property is brought live if you want to get the benefit of a free (£60) connection when giving £1500.
Don’t forget all the social benefits of all this – Schools, Churches and Village halls are getting connected along the way.
It might be a good time to mention actually how complex this all is and how amazing it is all this is being managed by B4RN and how quick things are moving now!
B4NTR fun facts*
- There is almost 300 Km of ducting in EACH 1/3 of the project, end to end…
- This is almost 2.5 times the length of Hadrian’s Wall
- Or the Distance From London to Paris!
- Total Distance of single fibres in the WHOLE of the project is about 900 Km end to end…
- The distance from Dover to John o’Groats (some of the fibre cables carry as much as 288 single fibres)
- The area covered in whole B4NTR project is 5 times as BIGGER than New York City’s 3 islands
– 250 sq km vs 50 sq km
– In comparison New York City has around 8 million properties and B4NTR has 1,800 properties – that’s a lot of distance to cover for not that many people!
*All the figures above are thought to be accurate though were calculated by volunteers locally at the pub for a bit of fun!
