Fibre broadband in Selling, near Canterbury

[RobL]

Has anyone heard of the broadband deployed in Selling.

I know someone who said:

I found online that Selling near Canterbury has a broadband project that takes its fibre feed from the local school

Does anyone have more detail on this effort?

Cheers,

--Rob.

[timmay]

Hi

More information about this project can be found on the thinkbroadband forum:- http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/not...d-project.html

Regards,
Tim

[SBJeffreys]

Read the article, looks like they have stalled, and perhaps crashed and burned!

Simon

[RobL]

Lawrence and I visited them and met the principal community representatives and the delivery company doing the work.

While an admirable effort, their business model caused me concern. Too few connections, with too many commercial entities in their critical supply chain that have commercial interests closer to their heart than community interests. With any Community Fibre initiative, you have to be very clear and open regarding where your operational risk lies.

It's not clear from that post whether they are still going or not, but it doesn't look good - some public announcement or a progress report, sharing their achievements to date would obviously help dispel rumors of gloom! Selling - please let us know you're OK!

--RobL.

[timmay]

The network is still going, at the moment. But they have now admitted that financially they are not doing well as it has take longer then planned to get just a small percentage of the village connected. Those that are connected are 'the easy' ones. They are on route between the School and the exchange location and then a few in Hogben's Hill just down the road from the School the other way. All in all they have basically only connected customers along Selling Rd and Selling Court. These are the cheapest and easiest to connect, there is a lot more work to do to connect others in more remote locations in the village.

It was only ever going to work if they could keep expanding out, filling the area around Selling where ADSL speeds are poor. This would have given them about 1,500~2,000 homes that could have connected to the exchange in Selling.