Broadband boost for Shropshire holiday cottage family
A group of holiday cottages near Whitchurch struggled with poor wi-fi speeds for four years before a firm stepped in to provide superfast broadband.
Visitors at the Alkington Grange farm site couldn't connect to the internet, but owners the Blantern family had been told it would cost £38,000 to install a superfast broadband connection.
James Blantern said: "We had to have four separate BT lines to serve our rental properties, and even then it only delivered around 1.5 mbps.
“Guests would ring up and say ‘it’s broken’ and I would have to go over and explain that it wasn’t broken but unfortunately that was the only speed we could get.
“I went through the process of applying to get a superfast connection via three different companies. We went to BT Openreach but the cost of installing a fibre connection was £38,000 which was prohibitive.
"And the two other companies we approached were similarly expensive. The cheapest solution offered was £20,000 and I got so frustrated I was almost at the point of giving up."
Engineers
James looked into the Fastershire project and spoke with Airband, a company that provides broadband connections in rural areas.
He said: "In October 2018, Airband engineers came out to do a site survey.
“We are about 8km from Airband’s nearest mast so it wasn’t a simple procedure. The engineers had to put a stronger receiver on to make sure we had the best signal.
“It’s very easy to slap something up that works straight away but that perhaps won’t stand the test of time, but they took the time to do a really good job. I was so impressed I actually sent an email to the engineer’s boss.
“We now have a capacity for up to 80 mbps but we are paying for 50 mbps. It’s a vast improvement on what we had before, and it has certainly stopped the moans.”
“And of course our two children, aged 8 and 9, are now able to watch Netflix which they couldn’t do before."
