James Body will give a presentation about this initiative, with the opportunity for the audience to ask questions afterwards.
Minutes:
James Body (Chairman of Bowerchalke PC) and Jonathon Andrew were in attendance to present information on the provision of a 4G network in the Chalke Valley, which was currently a ‘not spot’.
The project was started 4 months ago, with a single experimental cell in the village hall. The next step would be to place more cells around the Chalke Valley.
The previous plan from central government was to deploy five 30m masts along the Chalke valley. These did not turn up. Instead, CH4LK Mobile hoped to deploy 50 to 70 smaller cells providing 4G services, which would enable a much faster provision, for mobile and high-speed broadband.
The approach of moving away from big infrastructure to small was beneficial in an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
In terms of quality of service this setup would be able to achieve a minimum speed of 30mbps, which would work at a proper standard all of the time and would address patchiness, and unreliability of service, to make this business ready.
From a funding prospective this project required a large amount of funding up front to deploy the service.
The service would be a neutral host, so it would not matter which provider you were with for it to work. it will work on this.
Because there would be a deployment of lots of little cells instead of one large mast, this would provide lots of overlapping, and remove the issues of shadowing, and black spots.
With just five chimney mounted cells, this would cover all of the houses in Bowerchalke. Using the cell on the chimney to spread the signal across the village.
Ian Newman and son will be the installers of the cells. The colour of the antenna could be matched to the background of the chimney.
We asked the Minister for pilot funding of £1.5 million to cover the entire works.
The cost of deploying five large base stations would have cost £5m if that had gone ahead.
We ask that interested people get in touch with us. If there are people who may be interested in buying a cell for their house, or farmers who may be interested in running fibre across their land, please spread the word.
Questions:
· The government had made a commitment to enable our phone companies to put in the coverage, would they still come? Answer: Imposed coverage obligations on service providers, had all failed by the deadline. Offcome appeared to have let them off the hook. The large money-making organisations would not deploy infrastructure in to areas they could not make money in. We would only put fibre into the houses that have the cells, then use the radio to distribute the signal to others. We would run fibre along the fields.
· Travelling through Mead End in Bowerchalke last week, there was 3G coverage. Answer: Mead End was one of the few places you can get 3G from a couple of providers.
· How does the coverage go out further to people travelling through or farmers? Answer: The coverage would be able to travel, to entirely the whole valley. One of the reasons to go with moveable cells was that some farmers were interested in having the cell on the out building. We would be able to have conversation with individuals on what their requirement were.
· How will you make money on the broadband? Answer: The money will come from roaming revenue from other networks. We get paid for every minute, SMS, or data usage. The other revenue would come from the broadband. The major running costs were the costs on the backhall, the annual costs are not that large. It is perfectly feasible to put a chalk cell on the Wessex system.
· Will you be competitive with main providers? Answer: Yes. We can offer two types of service, one is where you can plug the phone line in to the back of the box and calls then come over the mobile line. The other service was fibre.
· In some villages where residents are close to the BT green box, they receive quite a high speed, whereas further away the speed drops off. Would you be in competition with BT? Answer: This project was focused on those people who did not have the provision.
· You have been in discussions with John Glen MP and Margot James, would there be any government funding to support this? Answer: Yes, we are looking to take the £1.5m.
· In Ridge, Chilmark, there were only 20 houses. Is each cell fed by fibre? Answer: Yes, most would be, or by a point to point radio link in some situations.
· Tisbury had its own ‘not spots’, which could not get fibre. Interesting to see how quickly this could be rolled out into other areas. Answer: If you have local backhall, this sort of thing can be rolled out fairly quickly.
· What were your timescales? Answer: We are deploying test cells, and would be interested to put one in Ebbebourne Wake. This could be achieved within the next 2 to 3 months.
· If a household was signed up to Wessex internet, what penalties would they face to get out of that? Answer: We need to get Wessex on side. A combination of one of our cells with Wessex internet backhall is a feasible combination.
The Chairman thanked James and Jonathon for attending. It was all about working together. You will be meeting with Cllr Thomson. We have several patchy areas with ‘not spots’. Let’s all pull together!
We want to push the kick off meeting when we launch the community interest company. If you live in a mobile not spot, come along and join the team and we will work to solve that not spot.
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