Colne Valley Fibre

Hi
My name is Roy Bennett and I am the founder of the National Community Broadband Association, based in Whitby North Yorkshire, we are looking to join up with and share our resources with those who seek to empower the community and enable it to own and operate its own Fibre/wireless broadband network.

Our sister project in Calderdale - Calder Valley Our Net - has been successful in winning a bid for £5000 in grant funding from the Grassroots Grants scheme. As with our project here in the Colne Valley, the strategy of the Calderdale project is to first build awareness and support at a grassroots level while scoping the key issues and challenges of the locality in order to make a strong bid for second round funding to enable a full scale feasibility study to go ahead.

The Taylor Review of the Rural Economy and Affordable Housing, commissioned by the Prime Minister and published late July 2008, states that while "Growth in the proportion of knowledge intensive business services between 1998 and 2005 – largely reliant on ICT infrastructure – has increased by 46 per cent in rural areas compared to 21 per cent in urban areas" the performance of broadband in rural areas is markedly poorer than that in urban locations: "recent research also suggests connectio

On Wednesday July 23 2008 the BBC reported on the increasing interest in community focused, or so-called "DIY" fibre projects across the country. See the full story entitled DIY schemes for super-fast net here. The story highlights several of the key benefits that a high speed fibre network can deliver.

BT today announced a £1.5 bn investment in fibre deployment in the UK. This is an important first step in the widespread deployment of fibre networks across the UK, although one has to say that the announcement raises more questions than it answers.

At just 10% of the estimated figure for a national roll-out, BT is clearly hoping and expecting that Regional Development Agencies and/or local authorities across the country are going to offer to partner with them - and put cash on the table - to deliver fibre, especially into rural areas.

Essentially, here in the Colne Valley, and more widely throughout the South Pennines region if the project develops as we hope it will, our vision is to build and run an Open Public Local Access Network, or OPLAN. Malcolm Matson the leading proponent of this model, has been arguing the case most eloquently for a number of years. This video of a presentation he made to a conference in the Netherlands in late 2006 sets out many of the core arguments that support our project.

"Super-fast broadband is crucial to the UK’s future. These next generation networks form part of the critical infrastructure of the country’s economy and will be central to the way we live our lives in the future.

Super-fast next generation broadband will come to change our perception of communications radically. Alongside mobile broadband, it will, in time, have a similar impact on our society and economy as first generation of broadband.

Not just in information and entertainment, but in how businesses and consumers organise themselves and interact and, increasingly, in aspects of our lifestyles such as healthcare."...

This interesting video interview offers a useful insight into the value of community owned next-gen networks in the US.