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Since attending a CBN Mentor day back in January and joining the CBN, South Witham Broadband are speeding onwards. A not-for-profit limited company based in South Witham deep in rural Lincolnshire, SWBB operate a community wireless broadband service based on innovative Mesh network technology, delivering high speed broadband access to five villages, an area of approximately 20 sq miles.
SWBB now have over 100 users!
56% of all web requests are served from the local community Mesh at 11Mb/s and don’t need to be downloaded from the internet which makes installation of software such as XP SP2 a breeze, local mail, WEB and FTP servers are deployed which vastly increases the speed of services for the local community. The Mesh is basically a high speed community WAN whose speed and services cannot be matched by large ISP’s deploying ADSL services.
SWBB also run a low cost internet café, an ICT equipment loan facility, and make software available to the community at no or very low cost. SWBB have also made the local public house into a WiFi hotspot (part of the WiFi Alliance's WiFi Zone Program), providing the only public WiFi access in the area. The Lodge Trust in Market Overton, a registered charity supporting adults with learning disabilities have had their buildings wirelessly networked by SWBB free of charge, and are going to provide a WiFi hotspot which will supply a service to the Caravan Club of England. SWBB are a member of the East Midlands Rural Charter, committed to making a positive impact on the region's rural areas. South Witham Broadband is run for the community by the community and was established with help and support from many local agencies.
The network provides SWBB with the ability to utilise many types of internet feed such as multiple satellite systems, or a combination of satellite, ADSL, DSL, cable etc by using multiple gateways providing a backhaul neutral network, allowing SWBB to take advantage of new technologies and suppliers such as BT, NTL etc as the market evolves. New services are coming onboard such as low cost security cameras, intelligent CCTV services, community forums, local servers for games and multimedia, also shared capital facilities like high quality print and plot services.
CBN Mentor Roy Eddleston of Cedar Consulting provides most of the technical guidance including the development of SWBB’s new Asterisk VOIP PBX which should be rolled out to the first users in October and will provide free or low cost telephony to anywhere in the world. With Roy’s help the network has now moved to MeshAP PRO which will provide a new feature set and services for SWBB users. Roy has also provided invaluable business planning services as part of his CBN brief and is working with many other community and commercial organisations both in the UK and overseas, delivering WiFi and Mesh services.
Helen Anderson
For and on behalf of South Witham Broadband Ltd
Correspondence Address: 19 Great Close, South Witham, Grantham, Lincs, NG33 5QH
Telephone 01572 768382
SWBBbsite www.wireless.southwitham.net
Company No. 5007568
A Not For Profit Company Registered in England & Wales
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