Broadband Cumbria

This is the start. Do please join the group if you have an interest; even just to show you’re there!

Hi Peter

I have a pulled together a document on the issues around fibre tax - I can send this to you as a starting point if you let me have your email address.

I am happy to have a chat too and share my current thinking on ways we might make progress on the issue

Happy New Year!

I’ve been looking through the impressive US National Broadband Plan website (http://www.broadband.gov/).

They’ve a bigger budget, certainly, but the plan itself rather puts last month’s UK Government offering to shame, describing SEVEN other benefit areas beyond economic opportunities, including a schools and libraries programme: http://www.universalservice.org/sl/about/overview-program.aspx

There’s lots more, well worth a glance…

Many have probably seen this, but I’m pretty impressed by the US National Broadband Website (http://www.broadband.gov/). In particular, they have a page of ’Action Agenda Items’: http://www.broadband.gov/plan/broadband-action-agenda-items.html. I’d really enjoy seeing something like this that illustrated and tracked the progress of each parish/Eden Declaration action point/key meeting etc. in one place.

Hi Peter, send a message to this member: http://broadbandcumbria.com/members/imhelenj/ Helen has done a lot of research into the issue of fibre tax already and can possibly save you doing it again.

Hi folks
Ref the Fibre Tax, I’ve been asked to investigate this to see what Councils might be able to do. Problem is I can’t find anyone at the District Council who knows anything about it!
So: Can anyone tell me for certain which Council or Gov Dept collects this tax? Does anyone in this group actually pay it or can you point me to anyone who pays it?

Hi Chris,
It’s a good question. Overhead on poles can be the lowest cost solution, but has maintenance costs to consider too, and never looks good although people grow to ignore it.
My personal preference would be underground, but overhead on powerlines where the poles are existing is attractive.
For drop cables to homes, an overhead cable, or catenary wire, is screwed to the wall of the home, but I believe the security of the fixing is the responsibility of the organisation installing the cabling. This is an important issue because the tension on the cable, or support wire, can pull a stone or brick out of a wall.
Where overhead cables cross roads they must be high enough to avoid the tallest vehicles, and allowing for some sag in the cable.
Underground cables have issues too, but possibly not as many.
As regards securing the cable along the boards near the gutter, in some countries the gutters have been used to support the cables! This is cowboy cabling, and I would never encourage it, but I have seen it done more than once!

Hi all,
Helen mentioned this idea to me and as I was in Hexham over christmas, had the opportunity to do a little experiment on a nearby wall (not Hadrian’s) I made the following observations
1) not all walls are as dry as they were when they were first built - damaged sections have often been repaired with cement and many sections are fused with moss and age.
2) Northumbrian Walls, unlike their cumbrian cousins are built in three layers (like the eifel tower) with stone ties (like midriff capstones) at the third heights.
3) In many places, cows seemed to be the greater risk than trees.
4) particularly in the corners of fields broken walls are often patched with barbed wire and wooden posts, supported by the fallen stones.
5) Walls do not cross streams
6) where a wall meets a building the two merge seamlessly.
however, I found a suitable section of wall and removed a couple of meters of cap stones, the stones below them that were mostly single thickness and the first layer of midriff ties. below these the wall was two large facing stones with moss soil and gravel in-fill in which a cable (old rope in the experiment) could easily be laid. In doing this I took great care to replace all stones in exactly their original position (despite some opposition from individual stones who shall remain nameless).
the whole task took about 1 hour to complete a 1m section (though this would be substantially faster if working a pattern from one end to the other) and though the wall was solid at the end, will no doubt be weakened and may take some years to settle.
The rope was undamaged (this could have been done with a fibre) in the process but my thumb was less fortunate.
in many places, water pipes - to feed cattle troughs - had been tied to the wall with steel wire and in some places these pipes had simply been ’tucked in’ behind loose rubble and vegitation at the base of the wall - these would both seem to offer simpler solutions to deploy and are exposed only to the same risks of damage.
On the matter of Gates; the solution for water pipes was almost invariably to choose a route that avoided them - even if this meant going round the other side of the field (though this option is made easier when reaching for the undefined location of a cattle trough).
I found one case where a pipe had been lifted clear over the gateway on posts at either side.
I hope some or all of that may be useful.

Hi John, would it be a daft idea to use aerial fibre just to save money and time?
Our village is full of wires already, phone lines zigzag all over the place, and there are loads of satellite dishes and tv antenna on massive poles to try to get the limited signal. I have this vision of getting rid of the lot and just having hidden fibre, wouldn’t it be fantastic to have all the comms through one pipe? We were thinking of running it along the boards under the gutters… we keep thinking of all different ways, but we come back to a ring round the outside of the village and fibre up the back garden… we have a few folk ready to dig once we get the feed in. I just wonder how many hoops we will have to jump through to cross over the road, and whether doing it overhead is just being lazy?