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cbayer

(146,218 posts)
Sun Sep 29, 2013, 01:21 PM Sep 2013

Broadband from the bell tower: the church that became an internet hub

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/29/broadband-bell-tower-st-andrews-church-paull

Fed up with inadequate broadband, an enterprising father and son installed a transmitter on St Andrew's church in Paull

Helen Pidd
The Guardian, Sunday 29 September 2013 11.34 EDT


St Andrew's church in Paull, East Yorkshire, which has a new community broadband provision. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

It was 4am on Thursday when Paull Taylor turned on BBC News to be greeted with a BT spokesman making grand promises about superfast broadband in rural areas. The telecoms man was insisting his firm had not "exploited" £1.2bn of public funds – an accusation made by the Public Accounts Committee this week – and promising that most country-dwelling Britons would receive 2MB broadband by 2015. Despite the early hour, the 20-year-old electrician was lucid enough to provide a pithy response:

"Bollocks. Absolute bollocks. He said the process was 'transparent'. 'Thoroughly transparent'. And yet we ask them whether they're going to get a cable to our house and they reply saying 'oh, we can't tell you'. Anyway, two megs is rubbish. Absolutely naff. Meaningless. You can't do anything with two megs."

Paull and his family live by a creek in the reclaimed marshland of Holderness, East Yorkshire, 10 miles south-east of Hull and six miles away from a main road. "No way are they going to dig a trench to lay fibre optic cable to our house, but they won't admit it," said Paull, as his dad, Simon, nodded enthusiastic agreement. "East Riding council have just given BT £14m to improve broadband provision in our area, but we understand we won't see any of that," said Simon, a moustachioed eccentric with bright eyes and big ideas.

Luckily, the Taylors predicted this at least a year ago and decided to take matters into their own hands. Fed up with waiting 20 minutes to download any email with an attachment, and cheesed off with not being able to stream the BBC's iPlayer, Paull and his dad came up with an idea.

more at link (and pretty funny)
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