Rural broadband: Cumbrians do it for themselves

A remote moorland community in Cumbria has become one of the first to equip itself with superfast broadband. Farmers dug the trenches and local people helped raise the funds to put down fibreoptic cables across the area surrounding Alston and it is hoped 1,000 families will be able to get speeds of 100 Mbps before most major cities.

Communications minister Ed Vaizey said the project was an example of how “the big society” could be used to bring faster broadband to rural communities, as he visited the area to “light” the connection between Alston and Nenthead, the highest market town in Britain.

The Alston “Cybermoor” has become a flagship for how communities can help themselves, he said. It is the latest example of local communities fighting back to get fair access to broadband speeds after a campaign was launched by the Daily Telegraph. Mr Vaizey will also be visiting a rural broadband conference, organised by MP Rory Stewart, which will bring together one of Obama’s key advisers on broadband as well as industry experts from Blackberry and BT.

The conference will look at innovative new ways to bring broadband to local communities such as using cables on telephone poles and “piggy backing” on existing lines to schools, hospitals, railway lines or even wind farms.

Mr Stewart also aims to install broadband “parish pumps”, and then allow communities to decide what to do with high-speed connections, which cost £10,000 each to install. Options include installing wireless access points for widespread, cheaper access or spending additional money, which residents could fund themselves, on extending the fibre network to individual homes. The Government has already earmarked some funding for increasing rural broadband in areas where businesses do not consider it commercially viable. Mr Stewart’s constituency of Penrith and the Border is the most remote in England, with 98 per cent counted as rural.

Earlier this year, the village of Lyddington in Rutland took a similar route when 11 local people each paid £3,000 to connect the village of 200 homes.