How to boost rural broadband speeds
Amazing though it sounds, 4,000 homes in the UK are classed as 'not spots', meaning they have no internet access at all. A further 2.5 million are 'slow spots' that have connections of 2.5Mbps or less.
Most of these homes are away from the cities, in rural communities where large ISPs argue it just isn't economical to install the cabling and phone exchanges necessary to provide an internet connection.
Even if you live in a rural area with the basic infrastructure needed for broadband in most places, with problems like signal degradation as you move further from the exchange and reliance on poor quality copper wiring to carry the signal, it's unlikely that you'll be enjoying the high-speed internet so many people take for granted.
The government has recognised this problem, and confirmed in August that it is providing £530million towards funding the rollout of superfast broadband across the UK. A further £300million will be available in 2017 as part of the TV licence fee settlement. Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt said:
"I am absolutely determined that the UK will have the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015 - one that we all benefit from. Fast broadband is absolutely vital to our economic growth, to delivering public services effectively, and to conducting our everyday lives. Some areas of the UK are missing out, with many rural and hard-to-reach communities suffering from painfully slow internet connections or no coverage at all. We are not prepared to let some parts of our country get left behind in the digital age."
But three years is still a long time to wait for these rural communities to be able to enjoy the same internet experience as the rest of the UK, and even with this funding, the coverage will not be complete. If you read the fine print, although millions will benefit, there are still many who won't.
This funding is only to help 90 per cent of the people who don't have 'high speed' internet, leaving the remaining 10 per cent still off the grid. What's more, it's down to the communities themselves to alert their local MPs so they don't miss the chance to be considered for the funding.
For those who are still left out by these plans, there are solutions available to connect to the internet, but they aren't ideal. There's mobile broadband technology that uses the mobile phone 3G network to carry the signal, but with patchy coverage and high costs, it isn't always the best solution.
Similarly, satellite broadband, which can cost up to £600 per household just to set up, also has high monthly rates (£30-£100 depending on usage) and only provides low data speeds (typically 2Mbps).
DIY broadband
So what can you do if you aren't covered by these proposals, or if you just don't want to wait?
Rural communities who feel ignored by large corporate ISPs are nothing new, and many have already done something about it. In a few places dotted around the country, communities have banded together, decided they couldn't wait for other ISPs to come to them, and instead have installed equipment and set up their own ISP.
Others with partial services have successfully expanded the reach of the connections they already have, extending the Wi-Fi coverage available to them over a much larger area.
Whether you want to set up your own ISP as a private enterprise to ensure your needs are properly realised or you just want to widen the area covered by the broadband you do have, PC Plus is here to help.
Spread it around
If you already have a connection, how about spreading it a little further? Perhaps you already have access to high-speed broadband, but only in one place. Maybe you have it in one building, but would like to share it with others.
There's a variety of ways to extend the range of your broadband and share your connection without incurring the costs of adding extra infrastructure like more cabling.
Better antennas
One simple way to extend the range of your broadband connection is to replace your router's provided antenna with a more powerful one. This will increase the strength of your Wi-Fi signal, and therefore its range.
How much you can improve it depends on your current setup, so you should start by checking your wireless equipment's manual for the antenna gain. This measures the degree to which your antenna can focus received and output signals, and is expressed in dBi (decibels isotropic).
The higher this figure, the better your system should perform. As a rough guide, the standard adaptor has a gain of around 2dBi, and every 3dBi you add to that will double your range. You can also use high-gain antenna dishes to boost your signal in this way, although these are mostly used to provide a tight band of signal to a specific point, rather than increase the all-round range.
Note that there is a legal limit for how far you can increase the power of your signal. If the range of just one wireless antenna isn't enough to reach all the areas where you want internet access, it may be worth considering setting up a wireless distribution system (WDS). This is where you add another wireless access point that acts as a bridge or repeater to relay the signal to other computers in range.
In effect, you're creating two wireless networks that work as one. This has the advantage of preserving the MAC addresses of client packets across links between access points. The downsides are that, because every access point has to be on the same channel, it can cause interference, and throughput is halved for each person attached to the network.
Be careful when considering this, because WDS isn't a tightly defined standard and different manufacturers' access points may not work together.
Wireless bridges
If the area with which you want to share your signal is too far way for either of these two systems to help, it may be worth investing in a wireless bridging kit. Provided you have a line of sight between the two buildings, you can transfer the broadband signal wirelessly across the gap.
Industrial versions of this technology can cost anything from £100 to £500, but will allow you to transmit your signal over a gap of three or four miles, and it can be set up in an afternoon.
If you don't have a couple of hundred pounds to spare, it may be easier to try a home-brew solution commonly known as a cantenna. Yes, that's a high-gain antenna made out of a can, and it's quite easy to make. This lets you focus the usually omni-directional output of your Wi-Fi antenna into a concentrated beam, which can then be received much further away. If you get it right, you can broadcast your signal to a building up to a mile away for the cost of some wire and two connectors.
Again, line of sight is very important, so you need to point it exactly at your PC or laptop's Wi-Fi receiver.
How to make a cantenna
1. Find the right can
To account for the right wavelength, it's important that you choose the best can for the job. Although a lot of people have made their cantennas from Pringles tins, some say that a larger tin like an SMA milk can provides a much better signal. Can diameters of 3-6-inches have provided good results, but everyone who's experimented with this DIY approach agrees that the longer the can, the better the result.
2. Get the right connector
You need an N-type female chassis mount connector, and the appropriate pigtail connector for your wireless card's external antenna connector. The chassis-mount connector will be placed through the side of the can so you can connect the pigtail cable to it, then connect that to your wireless card. You can buy the connectors and cables cheaply from www.solwise.co.uk.
3. Drill the hole in the can
The diameter of the can will determine where you need to drill the hole for the connector. It needs to be positioned a quarter of a wavelength from the base of the can. Luckily, there are calculators that will work this out for you, like the one pictured above from www.turnpoint.net. For example, with a 3.25-inches diameter can, the hole needs to be 2.49-inches from the bottom of the can.
4. Attach the chassis-mount connector
The hole for the chassis-mount connector has to be as tight a fit as possible, so we recomment drilling the hole slightly smaller than necessary and squeeze the mounting through. This will cause the minimum of interference inside the can. You will also need to solder 1.21-inches of wire to the top of the connector to act as an antenna inside the can.
5. Find a cap
A cap isn't necessary, but if you're mounting your cantenna outside, it will protect it from the elements. SMA milk cans and Pringles tubes come with plastic caps, but you need to check they don't interfere with the microwave rays emitted by your cantenna. To find out, put the cap into a microwave with a cup of water, then blast them for 10 seconds. If the water is warm and the cap is cool, it will work fine.
6. Getting the best signal
Once the chassis mount is in place, it's just a case of attaching the antenna to a suitable tripod or wall, and then pointing it in the direction you want to broadcast your signal. Before fixing it in place, you need to rotate the can to find the best signal strength. It's good to get a friend with a laptop at the other end of the setup who can tell you when the signal is highest.
How to set up your own ISP
Is there no broadband at all in your region? If you can't wait for the super-fast broadband rollout to make it to your area, or think that your MP isn't shouting loud enough to ensure your region is earmarked for development, there here is one more option that's worth considering - you could start up your own ISP.
There's nothing stopping you going into business for yourself as your own internet service provider - all you need to do is research whether it's a viable solution for your area, find some investors and apply for the funding.
Sound hard? There are people you can ask for advice and communities that have already gone through the same process, albeit before this government funding was available. One community that wasn't willing to wait for broadband to come to its village was Lyddington in Rutland. Rather than waiting for a big company to come to the rescue, its residents banded together and raised the capital to lease BT's services and lay their own fibre-optic cables, turning their internet no-go zone into a digitally connected hub that offers the 200 homes in the village download speeds of up to 40Mbps.
To do this, Lyddington's residents joined forces with a local ICT company, which was able to resell BT's broadband service. Director Mark Melluish said, "For the first time in UK telecommunications history, the telephone lines of customers are completely cut off from the local BT exchange."
Now they use their experience of setting up the company to offer consultancy services for others considering doing it themselves.
How does BT feel about the practice? The company told us that it's happy to help companies set up their own broadband services. "This is a positive development as, to date, BT has been alone in investing in rural areas. In the case of Rutland Telecom, it is buying our Ethernet products such as Backhaul Extension Service (BES) and Sub Loop Unbundling (SLU)."
Be prepared
This isn't a task to be undertaken lightly though - it needs to be a proper business proposition and will require a lot of preparation, both legal and structural, followed by preparing for the costs and provisions of billing, customer service and maintenance.
However, it does put you in control of exactly what internet provisions your area will be getting, and if you do it fast enough, you could even take advantage of some of the money put aside for exactly this kind of development of broadband services in rural areas.
Develop a plan
As the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's website (www.culture.gov) states, "County councils, unitary authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships can apply for a share of the money by developing a local broadband plan setting out how everyone in the area will be provided with superfast broadband access. Once the local plan is sufficiently developed, BDUK (Broadband Delivery UK) will allocate the funding and the work will be put out to tender to bidding suppliers".
If your business plan stands up to scrutiny - and there are consultancy services like Rutland Telecom that can help you to ensure you do all you can to make sure it does - then there's no reason why you wouldn't be in the running for funding.
Remember, the government is looking for effective solutions to the lack of broadband in rural areas, so you'll be doing it a favour by taking matters into your own hands. What's more, in order to make setting up an ISP a more attractive proposition to smaller companies and investors, telecoms regulator Ofcom has forced BT to drop its wholesale price by 12 per cent each year until 31 March 2014.
This means that anybody can take advantage of these competitive rates. The idea is to encourage stronger competition between ISPs in areas that have been traditionally ignored by larger organisations because of the costs involved in providing the service.
Money matters
So what are the actual costs involved in becoming your own ISP? Obviously the exact figures will vary depending on the length of fibre optic cabling that needs to be laid down and the number of telephone exchanges involved, but we can take Rutland Telecom's initial setup as an example.
In Lyddington, the costs for laying the cable to the village's exchange cabinet and replacing its innards with the latest fibre-to-the- home Ethernet technologies were covered by a £37,000 collaborative private investment - that's about £3,000 for each of the private investors.
As for money coming back in, each of the 200 Lyddington customers is paying £30 a month for the service. This does mean it will take a little while for the investors to recoup on their investment, but the service is doing well and at least they can access the internet while they wait.
How to set up your own ISP
1. Check it's the right approach
The first step is to check whether setting up an ISP is a sensible idea in your region. You can explore your options with organisations like the CBN, BDUK or companies like Rutland Telecom, which can help with the feasibility studies. Then you can work on a business plan so that you can demonstrate how your company is going to deliver its service to its customers and profits to its investors.
2. Organise the funding
It can cost tens of thousands of pounds to set up an ISP and lay the cable. There may be grants available for your region, but private investment seems to be the normal method of funding. This means finding 10 to 20 like-minded friends to invest a couple of grand each. If your business plan is sound, you should be able to off er them a reasonable return over the longer term, if the project is successful.
3. Get the lawyers in
There's a lot of red tape involved in setting up a company. Apart from the usual form-filling at Companies House, you'll need to sort out the planning permission for your infrastructure, the returns for the investors, the contracts with BT Openreach for using or taking over their phone lines and services, and the legal paperwork for the agreements on subscriptions and billing for your customers.
4. Buy/rent the technology
Investing in industrial technology is a costly business, especially if you're planning to future-proof your service. You'll need the latest fibre-to-the-home Ethernet switching technologies to replace your (likely) antiquated BT street cabinet, as well as the networking technologies required to make it all work. Covering the costs for buying or renting these needs to be covered by your business plan.
5. Trench warfare
Next, you need to lay your brand new fibre-optic cable and replace the innards of your village's BT street cabinet. Getting permission to dig up public highways isn't easy, so you'll need to plan for this part of the process a long way in advance. Then it's just a case of getting the workmen in - the whole job only took six hours to complete when Rutland Telecom performed the task in Lyddington.
6. Customer service
Now all you need to do is start billing your customers and provide some customer support should anything go wrong (like someone accidentally driving into your cabinet). Also, don't forget that now the Digital Economy Act is law, you'll be responsible for what your customers download using your servers, so policing their behaviour may be another cost that you need to consider.
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