Things are moving quickly. Fibre has been blown from the main cabinet at the Village Hall to Millbrook where it will join up with our connection to the outside world. Today, Tuesday, work started on fitting out the main cabinet (Head End) and it is hoped to finish that this week. Add that to the sterling work from 21 volunteers last weekend and, fingers crossed, we should see our first live connections very soon. It might have been raining but it turned out to be a Red Letter day for the Preston Richard Parish Broadband project. Why ? Because this was the day we connected the wider B4RN network to our Main Cabinet at the Village Hall - so bringing secure, fast, broadband for Preston Richard within touching distance. It’s hard to underestimate the importance of this step in the project - it absolutely underpins everything. The plan was for the route to go from Gatebeck Farm to the Village Hall. We had previously dug from each end but had a 70 metre gap in the middle. So fuelled by bacon butties, kindly provided by Katy and Loz Lawrence, a small band of volunteers braved the miserable conditions to complete the link. Sod’s law applied - we worked in the rain and when finished the sun came out.
We are now waiting for B4RN to blow the fibre for this link, at which point the main cabinet will be live and we can expand the local network through the village and beyond. |
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