Getting connected out in Blackmore Vale (From Bridport and Lyme Regis News)

Getting connected out in Blackmore Vale

4:00pm Saturday 29th September 2012 in News By Anne Bell

A new high-speed broadband service is bringing connectivity to more remote parts of rural Dorset.

M12 Solutions say the service called Wessex Internet will give the ‘poorly connected’ communities in and around the Blackmore Vale access to a superfast internet connection.

Initially the service is available to communities situated along the A350 in Dorset, south of Fontmell Magna, including Iwerne Minster and Shroton with coverage extending across towards Sturminster Newton but is expected to expand across The Vale as demand and capacity increases.

Wessex Internet Services will be able to provide up to 50 times the download speeds and up to 100 times the upload speeds currently available with fixed line broadband, and coverage particularly targets communities where other telecoms providers will avoid upgrading in the UK’s broadband upgrade programmes.

Part of the attraction with Wessex Internet Services is that a landline is not needed for it to work.

As such users can migrate to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, retaining the local number but saving in annual line rental charges.

The service has gone through testing to prove that its quality is equal to that of the better served towns and cities.

Wessex Internet Service’s last-mile connectivity is delivered by secure wireless links that connect back to masts that are already in place on local hillsides. The masts in turn are connected back by high-capacity gigabit fibre optic cable to the Wessex Internet Data Centre.

From this, they are able to deliver download speed of up to 30 Mb/s and upload speeds of 10 Mb/s with latency at less than three milliseconds across the network to end customers.

Matthew Skipsey, a local computer science graduate who founded the enterprise, says: “We first started two years ago by sending a fast broadband connection from Shaftesbury to a position outside Shroton six miles away via wireless.

“This 17 Mb/s service was then shared to businesses and early residential users in Shroton and Iwerne Steepleton and it transformed their internet experience.

“These early adopters were lucky if their old ADSL broadband reached speeds of 0.5 Mb/s. With demand for the service being proven and with the backing of local landowners we were able to approach local businesses and organisations.”

Anyone interested should visit the Wessex Internet Service website at wessexinternet.com If outside the initial coverage area, interest can still be registered as expansion is down to feedback and feasibility.

Meanwhile businesses in Charmouth are the latest to benefit from a new, high speed communications link from BT’s Ethernet network, aimed at medium-sized businesses, shops, schools and other organisations.

The BT technology, which has just gone live, makes it possible for businesses to opt for a choice of guaranteed broadband speeds over a dedicated line and across multiple sites.

Customers can choose Ethernet speeds between one megabit per second (Mbps) and 10 Gigabits per second (Gbits), depending on their needs. At the top rate of 10 Gbits the system is capable of transmitting 10 billion bits of information per second.

Charmouth and Ilminster in Somerset now make up 100 communities in the South West which have already been upgraded, including Chard, Taunton, Yeovil, Bridgwater, Dorchester, Weymouth and Poole.