BT Provides Somerset Village With Microwave Superfast Broadband

Businesses and homes in Northlew in Devon are among the first in the UK to benefit from superfast broadband delivered over a microwave link rather than fibre.

The historic village has been connected to BT’s Openreach network with a 4km link and it is hoped that the method could be used in other rural areas where the laying of fibre is undesirable or unrealistic.

Around half of the properties connected in the village have signed up for superfast broadband services, with speeds of up to 80Mbps on offer, and Hardwicke in Gloucestershire the next settlement earmarked for microwave connectivity.

Microwave broadband

“Getting superfast broadband to Northlew has been an immensely challenging and satisfying project,” says Paul Coles, BT South West regional manager. “We knew that it would not be viable to lay a fibre optic cable to such a small remote community, but we were able to make the village one of the first places in the UK to try out this new microwave radio solution.

“The radio link connects to a new broadband cabinet near the centre of the village, which offers all the usual fibre broadband speeds and benefits.”

The rollout is part of the £94 million Connecting Devon and Somerset project, which has received government funding from the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) initiative which aims to extend superfast broadband to areas not covered by commercial deployments. It is intended that 95 percent of properties in the two counties will be covered by 2017.

“This is just one example of many of an innovative approach to bringing fibre based broadband to remote communities – and that innovation will continue,” adds Coles. ““We’re more than four years into rolling out fibre broadband across the South West, whether through our commercial programme or with our public sector partners, so the production line is well and truly established and primed to deliver even more over the coming years.”

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