The saga continues…

I went along to a session arranged by some part of the Welsh government, or Powys, or Cardiff council (must have nodded-off at that bit), about rural broadband for businesses. They put up someone to do the introduction who clearly needed a course on ‘broadband for beginners’, as most of the audience knew more about the subject than her. Gives us an idea why this is going to be hard.

Learnings from the (2 hour!) session. There weren’t many. Could have all been done in 30 minutes.

•  there is a ‘voucher’ available for business in Powys, for £3,000 towards getting broadband. See the Cardiff version of the scheme
• each business can have one voucher, but they can be pooled for a joint scheme – so there is hope!
• Each business has to apply for the voucher separately – I’ll go first, to scout out the process – then we can collectively get quotes from suppliers to install what we need.

There were a couple of suppliers there of BB services, but neither had any experience of putting BB on overhead cables. We will probably need this, as one had a rough estimate for buried fibre cabling: “about £100 per METER“. You do the sums to figure out what it would cost to bury a cable all the way from Stanton! But at least it rules-out that option.

So, next step is to apply for the Voucher: stay tuned for more…

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