Villagers set up ultra-cheap broadband

People power has dramatically improved the lives of a remote Westcountry village, after the community clubbed together to build its own broadband connection.

Northlew, seven miles from Okehampton in Mid Devon, was repeatedly told by BT that the majority of homes would never have the high-speed service because they lived too far from the exchange.

However, despite being quoted at least £400,000 to build the communication facility that people in urban areas take for granted, the village persevered. Now, they have found new technology which has finally delivered the connection they need.

Residents helped raise funds, and the local chapel makes up part of the infrastructure.

The community company has also bought the formerly dilapidated local red phone box, to protect it for posterity. It now has its own business line, providing phone calls for 1p per minute to anywhere in the world, the cheapest public call charges in the country.

The new broadband has meant big improvements for villagers. Mothers have been reunited with their far-flung relatives via video, students are able to study from home and businesses have seen productivity treble.

Graham Everitt, a video library consultant, once had to make an 18-mile round trip up to three times a day in order to download large images on his mobile internet connection. He said: “I would say my productivity has increased by 200 per cent, because I’m not on the road all the time.”

Christopher Marson is one of five directors who have helped make the vision a reality. He moved to the village in 2008, one of many who believed that Northlew would one day have broadband.

The village had already formed a company, which had tried several times to introduce the service, to no avail.

In the end, Mr Marson found state-of-the-art technology from Israel which works along a line leased from BT, exclusively to serve Northlew. It comes in through the chapel, in an underground cable, and is broadcast from the church tower via a radio signal. Houses with a receiver now get the speed they need.

The line costs £7,500 per year, distributed between the 150 households signed up to the service. Each pays £18 per month. The set up cost was £50,000, with £6,000 raised through community events such as curry nights, and much of the rest from a grant from Linking the Environment and Farming’s Dartmoor Fund. The group also had support from South Hams District Council.

Mr Marson said: “We have residents who are doing Open University courses who can now work from home. Children were having to stay late at school because they couldn’t log in to access their homework, but now they can.

“On Christmas Eve, when the connection went live, I installed Skype for one woman, who is in her 70s. She was able to talk to her son in New Zealand face-to-face for the first time in a number of years, and she burst into tears.”

Last year, Northlew lost its shop and the BT phone line service was shut, but now residents can at least order goods on line. The approach is in line with the

Mr Marson said the community had “put two fingers up” at BT when they had said a connection was not possible.

Now, Mr Marson is working as a consultant through his private company, westcoastbroadband.net, to help other communities achieve the same result.

Fellow Northlew Community Company director John Maguire said BT had “misled” residents, saying they could have the service if they raised £600,000, but in fact the infrastructure would never have worked.

In a statement, BT said insisted they had tried to help.

“A detailed survey showed that it is currently not commercially viable for BT to provide a good quality broadband service for the remaining households in the village, which meets all the necessary requirements. The project, involving the laying of seven and a half kilometres of underground ducting and cabling, would have represented an investment by BT of about £600,000.”