100mb broadband for Carlisle

A Cumbrian businessman is bringing 100mb broadband to Carlisle as prepares to do battle with multinationals like BT for the contract to provide superfast broadband across the whole county.

The county council is preparing to finalise details of a tender process after Cumbria was selected as one of four pilot areas to benefit from a £10m broadband subsidy.

Many people are assuming BT are front runners to secure the contract on the back of their projects to roll out superfast broadband in Northern Ireland and Cornwall, but David Durnford, chief executive of Smallword Cable also has his eyes on the prize.

"We will be putting a bid in and I believe we have a good chance of winning the contract," he said.

Smallworld supplies fibre optic broadband, telephony and cable TV to homes in Cumbria, Lancashire and Scotland. The company has a large datacentre in Kingstown, Carlisle and an office in Kendal. Around thirty of its staff of 70 are based in Cumbria.

It has customers across Carlisle and its network covers over 10,000 homes across the north and west of the city, and from April the company will be launching a premium 100Mb/s fibre optic broadband service for around £29 a month. When launched this will be the fastest broadband available in Cumbria. 

The company has a project manager working full time on preparing on a bid for the Cumbria broadband pilot which is likely to focus on:

- Using its Carlise data centre as a central hub to provide the best internet connectivity

- Taking fibre broadband into communities and providing a point to which local groups can connect fibre to homes

- Using existing infrastructure including the electricity network as means to take fibre to some rural villages (running a broadband fibre below electricity lines) 

- Supplying broadband wholesale to those community groups that want to set up their own schemes

Mr Durnford also believes his offering will gain more public support as it will bundle together faster broadband with telephone line rental and multi-channel TV

"We have to make sure are offering something that is affordable and offers people more than just paying more for faster broadband." 

And he is bullish about why he hopes to knock BT out of the race to supply broadband across Cumbria.

"BT wants public money to subsidise the same approach they are using everywhere else. Yet their approach isn't right for rural locations like Cumbria - most people will not get the speeds that are promised and instead we need to use this once in a lifetime opportunity to get it right and deliver something that will last for future generations. 

"Also the whole point of this Government money for Cumbria is to be innovative and BT's approach is not innovative - arguably they shouldn't even be bidding."

But it won't be until the county council agrees the scope of its Accessible Cumbria project at the end of March that the battle for broadband can really commence.