Member Article

Rural Leeds businesses dig their way to ultra-fast internet

A number of small businesses and farms based in Eltofts, a rural area of North Leeds, enlisted the help of a local B2B telecoms provider to build their own private pure fibre network after suffering from staggeringly slow connections.

Frustrated by the lack of options available from leading service providers to deliver fast, reliable broadband to the area, businesses in Eltofts agreed to work together to install their own private pure fibre internet connection. After just four months, their ultrafast gigabit city connection went live.

It rapidly became clear, after a number of options were explored, that most service providers’ solutions still involved delivering the connection over old copper lines, which had caused years of problems for the professionals in the area – engineers were even visiting the area as often as once a fortnight to repair faults.

Having been approached about securing a private connection, B2B telecoms provider, Diva Telecom, provided a gigabit speed connection over a 24km length of fibre to Wetherby Road in Eltofts and from there, residents dug their own trenches so that the fibre could be laid directly to their home offices.

Eltofts now has the fastest rural broadband in the world and benefit from upload and download speeds of 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps).

Andy Wright, owner of Bardsey Computers in Eltofts, said: “For years Eltofts has suffered from slow internet speeds and sub-par services, in some cases spending over £80 per household for dual lines to achieve a mere 6Mbps download speed. As a community, we agreed that action had to be taken which is how we came to explore the option of a private fibre optic leased line.

“Diva Telecom provided us with the ability to take control of our own connection and install a network at a much lower cost that provides an upload speed up to 3,000 times faster than our previous connections; it’s been an amazing improvement and has made a huge impact on all our lives. A fast and reliable connection is now a necessity for businesses and like many rural communities, we were being left in the dark ages.”

Twelve premises have now been connected to the Gigabit Fibre network in Eltofts; Professor Simon Kay, a renowned plastic surgeon who performed the first double hand transplant in the UK earlier this year, is one of the residents benefitting from the Gigabit City Leeds connection.

London-based infrastructure provider CityFibre are responsible for the roll out of the pure-fibre network and launched Leeds as a Gigabit City in partnership with Diva Telecom in 2016.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by CityFibre .