A rural community that designed and built its own fibre to the premises’ (FTTP) broadband network is now helping other villages and towns bypassed by the National Broadband Plan (NBP) to future proof and become more attractive places to live, work, invest and raise a family.
Kilkenny LEADER Partnership (KLP) has teamed up with the European Network for Rural Development (ENRD) award-winning ‘Broadband 4 Our Community’ group in Piltown/Fiddown, close to the Kilkenny/Waterford/Tipperary border, to inspire others to become ‘Smart Villages’.
Together, they are preparing to show other rural groups in Kilkenny how they did it and spur other blackspots struggling with cripplingly slow broadband speeds to potentially set up their own community-owned and -operated future proofed broadband networks.
It is a blueprint they say can be replicated nationwide.
Workshops on community broadband
The series of regional workshops across Co. Kilkenny begins in Freshford next Tuesday, October 25, and culminates with a joint seminar in Piltown on Saturday, November 19.
It is aimed at helping local community and voluntary groups to “take charge of their digital future” as ‘Smart Villages’, in line with the EU’s evolving policies on rural areas, Kilkenny LEADER Partnership has said.
KLP CEO, Declan Rice, hopes that other community-owned broadband projects will emerge to boost remote working opportunities, promote rural enterprises, make Kilkenny’s towns and villages more attractive places to live, work and raise a family, while future-proofing their area’s broadband infrastructure for generations to come.
“The entirely community-owned and -run, Broadband 4 Our Community (B4OC) network has already transformed how locals live, work and study,” Rice explained.
“Crucially, as a non-profit company, B4OC can be more affordable than packages offered by commercial operators in equivalent areas. Its impact has been recognised with a coveted ‘Rural Inspiration Award’ from the Brussels-based European Network for Rural Development.
“Profits generated locally by B40C above maintenance costs, will also be ploughed back into community projects in the Piltown-Fiddown area,” he added.
Work has been completed on the first group of 50 homes and businesses, which now have download speeds of at least 150 megabits per second (Mbps).
When completed in 2023, it is anticipated that the 750 homes and businesses in a 3.4km² area of Piltown and Fiddown, which is outside the NBP investment area, will have access to these high speeds, and a future-proofed broadband service they can afford.
Identifying communities
Rice continued: “We are working with experts to help identify and prioritise communities in terms of their potential and capacity.
“As the process is one of ‘helping communities to help themselves’ they will need to demonstrate an appropriate sustainable scale to their community; the capacity to understand and deliver the project; and be situated to allow linkage to fibre optic cable linkage to the internet.
“We’re encouraging interested small towns and villages in Kilkenny outside the National Broadband Plan investment area to attend our initial regional workshops and information sessions, and we’re planning a follow-up seminar for communities who want to pursue their interest to the next stage of planning development,” he added.
B4OC project manager, Jim O’Brien, said they’re eager to help other communities do what they have already done.
“What we did can definitely be replicated elsewhere. In addition to Kilkenny LEADER Partnership’s initial and continued support and encouragement, we were very fortunate to get the Tomar Trust, O’Shea Farms and Blacknight on board. Their support was hugely beneficial.
“To make this work in other communities you need a steering group with a mixed skill set, time and determination. We are fortunate to have a representative body with accounting, legal, telecommunications and community-project management experience,” he explained.
“Any group will also have to be prepared to burn leather – shoe leather. You need buy-in from the entire community and you need to knock on many doors if you are to run cables on poles or underground across people’s homes or land.”
But the project manager added that any group starting out on this journey will have the benefit of the B4OC group’s experience on suppliers, components, solutions and problems you can run into along the way.