DIY Community Broadband

nigelhanlon

Not sure where exactly to post this but I thought it would be constructive to get a few opinions.

I live out in a small village called Keenagh in Co. Longford and like most rural places outside large towns we have no broadband coverage from Eircom. Each year they say it will be reviewed or they are rolling out their Next Generation Network in place XYZ but with the recent news of their financial troubles, I can't see our exchange being upgraded any time soon.

So right now the only Internet options I have are the National Broadband Scheme powered by Three's slow temperamental midband or Ripplecom (formally Ice Broadband) who have the Rural Broadband Scheme contract for our area. So far I have been waiting 5 weeks for them to even schedule an engineer visit with no guarantees I will have a line of sight with the mast. There is also satellite broadband available but with insane limits, high costs and slow speeds it is just not feasible in my mind. Not to mention the large dishes scattered around the place are an eye sore.


I really doubt I am the only one frustrated by this lack of basic infrastructure. It has gotten to the stage now that I believe it would be far simpler to not rely on the Government to solve these issues and just try as a community to do it ourselves. There have been plenty of cases worldwide where communities have pulled together and built their own infrastructure so why not us?

I am self-employed as a Systems Administrator in Dublin so I have good experience with computer networks. My biggest problem is where to begin and how to solve the immediate issues. Once I have a clear picture of what needs to be done I suppose the best thing to do would be call a public meeting and take it from there.


Right now the big questions on my mind are:

What type of network to build? Mesh vs Fixed Wireless?

Depending on equipment used will I need a license from Comreg?

If I need to place repeaters or other infrastructure will people allow it on their property?

Where will the actual broadband feed come from?
Will there be enough bandwidth?
What about redundancy?

Who pays for it all? Start a Broadband Co-op or small ISP myself?

Is it cost effective and is there enough demand?

If I can get the basic formula of this right then maybe it can be applied to other villages but my goal right now is to simply provide basic broadband to our community at reasonable cost.

Any thoughts would be most welcome.

Nigel.

funnyname

Have a read of this

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056423539

nigelhanlon

Ahh, a great place to start! Thanks really appreciate it

Sponge Bob

Alternatively maybe have a chat with Net1 and see whether they have 'plans'.

http://www.net1.ie/images/general/coveragemap.jpg

Big Lar

We have setup a similar project here in West Waterford.
To get the bandwidth is the killer, from there on it just falls into place, we currently have 34 users on a 10meg connection with running costs of around around €500.00 per month between bandwidth, insurance etc....

We started off small and after an initial investment of about €1500.00 to buy a bit of gear we got the ball rolling.

We stuck with Ubitiquiti gear as is is cheap and fairly good quality, we have had a few ups and downs along the way but all in all tis a good scheme and growing rapidly, we envisage our investment to be paid of fully by Sept/Oct and from there we upgrade our bandwidth and network.

Any questions drop me a PM for a phone number and you can give me a bell anytime.

-=al=-

fair play for taking it into your own hands, props to you fellas

****ing interent is still a farce in this place to well done

nigelhanlon

Thanks all.

I am currently looking at where we could source a Internet connection. Getting a node from Eircom seems like a really expensive option unless you have the numbers to make it worthwhile.

There are a number of other Wireless providers around us (Airwire, Net1, Bounce Broadband, Arden) so I am hoping to contact them and see what can be done. I am hoping we could build a link to one of the networks but I'm not sure what kind of bandwidth we would need.

The village is at most 300 people but I doubt all would want broadband. A high estimate would be 50 people but once I have the facts and figures a public meeting might surprise me.

Big Lar, thanks again for the support. I will no doubt be calling on your experience as this progresses.

Fergalf

nigelhanlon wrote: »

I live in Keenagh and have the satellite with 3 on NBS service is ok at times speeds not great and 10gb cap is awful; makes working from home difficult as I travel to Dublin daily and would be great if option to work from home but i need to dial into a VPN which is bandwidth heavy and is slow; rolling 10gb means is slow some days and you never have enough limits.

I've rang ripplecom and they say have upgraded their masts in ardagh to deliver up to 8mb but I've not got any indication of minimum speeds etc or if I've line of site to the mast which i doubt I have I believe the estate is in a dip as mobile coverage is poor with often no signal on my O2 network.

I would be definitely interested in a real broadband service but u would be a heavy user and wish to be able to stream hd quality content; sky anytime service etc.

My estate has a number of the 3/on wave satellites so I know there is a number of users looking for decent service not sure there requirements or what they are will pay.

Let me know how u get on with ripplewave but I heard awful stories about poor service, speeds, customer service (9-5:30 mon fri only) high price etc. €44 for 8mb with 70gb cap sound good compared to 2mb and 10gb cap for €20 but only if you get the speeds.

Hoping for a real service,

Keenagh resident!

Oceans12

Big Lar wrote: »

We have setup a similar project here in West Waterford.
To get the bandwidth is the killer, from there on it just falls into place, we currently have 34 users on a 10meg connection with running costs of around around €500.00 per month between bandwidth, insurance etc....

We started off small and after an initial investment of about €1500.00 to buy a bit of gear we got the ball rolling.

We stuck with Ubitiquiti gear as is is cheap and fairly good quality, we have had a few ups and downs along the way but all in all tis a good scheme and growing rapidly, we envisage our investment to be paid of fully by Sept/Oct and from there we upgrade our bandwidth and network.

Any questions drop me a PM for a phone number and you can give me a bell anytime.

hi Big liar, can you tell me what provider you got the 10mb from, and is that €500 monthly?