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L-R: Joan Raine (Eden District Council), Martin Butcher (Kryton TV), Guy Jarvis, Simon Davison, Craig Brass (all NextGenUs)

Congratulations to Guy Jarvis (@fibreguy), Craig Brass (@craigbrass) and their team at NextGenUs for successfully installing a wireless node at High Murber Farm, Sleagill. The core node will provide backhaul for wireless nodes at Murton, Blencarn, Dufton, Milburn, Great Salkeld and Cliburn, and NextGenUs hope to increase speeds from 0.3Mbps to a top speed of 75Mbps, with peak time speeds of 25Mbps.

NextGenUs will be making announcements as progress continues on the network, so keep an eye on their blog.

The Big Society and rural broadband

You may have spotted Louis and me round and about Cumbria with a video camera recently. We may even have interviewed you! It’s because over the last few weeks we’ve been putting together a couple of videos about the Big Society project in Cumbria. We now proudly present ‘The Big Society and Rural Broadband’, one of two films we produced for the ‘Big Society: One Year On’ event in Westminster last week. It features David Tunstall of Tunstall Tractors in Fell End, as well as a few familiar faces from this website and the broadband project generally. We hope you enjoy it!

There is also a film about Neighbourhood Planning, which you can watch by clicking on this link.

If you have recieved an email from ‘Tina Williams’ via the site today please delete it.

‘Tina’ is a spam bot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spambot) who managed to create an account on BC this afternoon - ‘she’ proceeded to send messages to everybody. An bot of this sort can do no real damage but can be irritating. Any links in her email, though, may be unsafe to follow.

Please note that ‘Tina’ had no means of accessing email addresses or private messages and its objective was simply to spread an advertisement as broadly as possible.

We’re sorry this happened and I am making some changes that will hopefully bar bots like her in the future. As ever, if you have any concerns please send me a private message, or of course leave a comment below.

Duncan

East Cumbria Community Broadband Forum was established in March 2011 with the following aims:

1. Provide a forum for sharing information, experience and knowledge and undertaking peer review in the development of community broadband services in East Cumbria.

2. Undertake representation of community broadband groups in East Cumbria in relation to the Cumbria County Council/Broadband Delivery UK Accessible Cumbria broadband project and other relevant bodies.

3. Facilitate procurement of broadband services shared between community broadband groups in East Cumbria.

Representatives

The Forum is open to community broadband groups located in East Cumbria that are endorsed by one or more of their local parish councils to campaign for improved broadband services for those communities. Each member group can nominate two people to represent it at the Forum and meetings are held regularly in various locations in East Cumbria.

Further details of the Forum’s terms of reference and a registration form for groups seeking membership are available from the Secretary, Anne Fleck.

The current membership of the Forum is shown below along with the parishes each group is working with. Also shown are their websites. Two organisations have observer rather than member status. Make sure your community joins them!

In the House of Commons yesterday, Rory Stewart MP won support from all parties to press for increasing the 4G mobile coverage obligation to 98%. Cumbrian MPs Tim Farron and John Woodcock also spoke in the debate.

The text of all three speeches is below. You can read the full debate in Hansard.

Or there is a video via the Parliamentary archive here (Internet Explorer only).

Click on an MP’s name to read their speech

Rory Stewart MP
John Woodcock MP
Tim Farron MP

Rory Stewart MP (Penrith and the Border)
(back to top)

When I last saw Ed Richards, the head of Ofcom, he said that the most powerful argument he required was a political argument. He wanted to hear that Members of Parliament cared about broadband and mobile coverage. If that is all he requires, I might as well resume my seat now. I am not an expert on the constitutional history of this House, but as far as I know there have not been so many names on a motion on the Order Paper for debate on the Floor of the House in recent memory.

What, though, is the motion facing us today? It has three parts. The first focuses on rural need, which I hope Members will address in their speeches. The second focuses on mobile coverage, and the third focuses on the Government’s commitment to super-fast broadband. All three are connected. In a sense, it is already outdated to separate them. It is increasingly clear that a separation between voice coverage and data coverage is a thing of the past; that an attempt to separate the rural areas from the urban areas is a thing of the past. The central fact about broadband and mobile coverage is that it is—not to be too pretentious—a single global universe. Nevertheless, I will hand over to other Members, who will talk about the first and third elements of the motion. I will focus exclusively on the second part—the mobile coverage obligation.

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Please come to a meeting on awareness of IT and the uses of the internet on Tuesday 24th May from 4-5pm at the Eden Rural Foyer, Penrith. Grow IT! in Eden is looking for community champions to promote broadband use in Eden. The initiative is funded by UK Online and based at the Eden Rural Foyer in Penrith. They are keen to share their training resources with you all. If you are unable to attend the launch there will also be taster sessions on the same day from 5-6pm and on Thursday 26th May from 1-6pm. Please go along if you can, and introduce yourselves to Angela Richardson and the team.

With best wishes,
Rory

Barry Forde has kindly shared his map of the CLEO network, which is available to view and download by clicking here

Yesterday’s Broadband Cumbria newsletter contained an error in the events section.

If you are planning on attending the meeting in Rosley on the 10th March please be aware that it is principally for Rosley and Westward Parish rather than the whole Northern Fells area.

Sorry for any confusion caused.

To find out more about the meeting, please contact @marion1.

Today’s front page is a bit different from yesterday’s, and hopefully better. There’s also a new Facebook box on it so please do ‘like’ BC on there if you haven’t already.

Some people pointed out the reply function in the groups wasn’t working – this has now been fixed.

This post is really about the all-new Broadband Cumbria events calendar. It can automatically draw together events from all the microsites and display them in one glorious calendar, with information about location, time etc. So if you’ve got an event lined up, let your local broadband champion know. They can add it to the parish microsite, and it will appear on the calendar. If you run a microsite, see this guide for how to set up events.

On the topic of microsites, if you run one you can benefit from some useful new widgets that will make it easier for broadband champions to communicate with their local community. Read on…

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If you look to the left of your screen, you’ll spot our new feedback tab.

By clicking on it, you can easily suggest features and ideas or get help with with broadbandcumbria.com, from how to register as a user to setting up and improving your own parish microsite.

Have a go! No question is too small.

If you’ve tried to leave feedback and have been confronted with a box asking for your username and password again, click ‘Read the rest of this entry ->’ for instructions.

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