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Broadband

Page Editor: Fra Cooke
                                                    Page last Reviewed: 2 Feb 2012

Campaign for better Broadband

Our parish has four Broadband Champions so far - Liz Clarke, Fra Cooke, Norman Jackson and Veronica McGloin - we would welcome anyone else who would like to join the team.
 
On November 24th, we updated the Parish Council on the Cumbria-wide broadband project and our activity within the parish - this is what we said:
 
  • “Connecting Cumbria” – Cumbria County Council’s Cumbria-wide broadband project  - is scheduled for implementation 2012-2014 – not yet clear how much this will improve broadband connections within the parish (See attached one page project update)
  •  We are actively participating in various Cumbria broadband groups and maintaining links with neighbouring parishes to try and secure max benefit for the parish from the Cumbria-wide project and any other initiatives.
  •  At present most , but not all, households and businesses within the parish seem to  have broadband speeds that just meet their current needs. Those furthest from the Glenridding exchange eg Hartsop, do not and we are looking at how their broadband access / speeds might  be improved.
  •  We are gathering information about actual broadband speeds by asking people in the parish to send us speed test results via the Patterdale Today website. We are doing this through contact with individuals and local groups, and this is helping to raise awareness  and helping us understand local needs. 
  • We hope that next year we can influence how much benefit we get locally from the “Connecting Cumbria” project. We want to be able to show how important it is that every household and business in our parish has the opportunity to access superfast broadband .
  •  We plan to update the Parish Council every 3 months.
 
To support the Patterdale campaign, we plan to produce a summary document for submission to Cumbria County Council, that will explain the present inadequacies, not-spots, tourism and business needs of the valley. 

Even if you consider your broadband quite usable at present there are many in the valley who cannot access broadband. In five years time when video and TV on demand is commonplace, the current capability will be very restrictive and slow 

Results of Last Year's Vote

Many in our community are still unable to access broadband at any useful speed, let alone access "superfast broadband". Last year, BT  set up a website where individuals in a community could register their interest in faster broadband. 
 
We  wanted to exploit the opportunity and make the point that there was a definite interest in improving access to broadband for everyone in our area served by the Glenridding exchange. 

118 of us registered on the BT website by the
deadline of 31st December, 2010.
 
A big thank you to everyone who registered. 118 votes is just over 26% of those eligible, a higher percentage than for  any  similar sized exchange in Cumbria.

Broadband Meets Localism Conference 15th January 2011 - Conference Report and Papers

 
The “Broadband meets Localism” conference was held on Saturday 15 January at Carlisle Racecourse  with 140 people attending . Delegates attending were a mix of people from parish councils, community groups, local residents, elected members from all three tiers of local government, Local MP’s, local business people, officers from a range of statutory and third sector organisations and technical specialists. Click here to access the Carlisle City Council report on the conference, with links to videos of the day and speakers presentations.

Update News in Brief

January 2012 latest - click here to see the latest Connecting Cumbria newsletter.  

November 17 2011 latest -Cumbria County Council has published its Connecting Cumbria Broadband Strategy 2011-2015 - click here to go to the project website where you can view the strategy documents, or click here to view a one page summary of the strategy.

November 2011 latest -Cumbria County Council has extended the procurement timetable for the Connecting Cumbria project - not clear as yet what impact this will have (if any) on the overall project timetable- click here to see the latest Connecting Cumbria newsletter . The newsletter gives other project updates, including a progress report on the five pilot projects in Cumbria that will test out how best rural communities can secure access to superfast broadband.   

October 2011 latest - Cumbria County Council has renamed the Cumbria wide broadband project as "Connecting Cumbria" - click here to see the latest Connecting Cumbria newletter. To visit the Broadband section of the County Council website, click here.

August 2011 latest - Cumbria County Council announced on August 26th that they have now shortlisted three bidders - BT Global Services, Cable and Wireless, Fujitsu - to deliver the technical aspects of the Accessible Cumbria broadband project. A final decision on the successful bidder will be taken in December 2011. To see the full press release, click here.

July 2011 latest - Cumbria County Council has just upgraded the broadband section of their website - click here to access the new pages.
 
June 2011 latest -  Cumbria County Council has announced the list of suppliers who have successfully made it through to the second stage of its ICT contracts procurement process.The contract, worth £120million, is made up in two lots as follows;
 
Lot one is for the contract to provide ICT services to the council, this includes provision and maintenance of computers, phones and security etc.
 
Lot two is to support an exciting county wide initiative to improve public sector networks across Cumbria and to implement super-fast broadband across the County, a project known as ‘Accessible Cumbria’.
 
The successful bidders through to the second stage (in no particular order) are:
 
Lot One – ICT Services
BT Global Services
Commendium Ltd
Computercentre UK Ltd
Fujitsu
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd
 
Lot Two – Accessible Cumbria
BT Global Services
Cable and Wireless
Commendium Ltd
CSC
Fujitsu
 
In total 124 suppliers registered an interest in the two ICT contracts with a total of 23 suppliers submitting submissions in the first stage. The next stages involve the shortlisted companies entering into detailed dialogue with the Council to complete their outline stage 2 submissions for each lot by the end of July, with final detailed solutions by the end of September. The final decision will be taken by Cabinet in December 2011. The contract start date will be 1st April 2012.
 
April 2011 latest - Cumbria County Council has issued their first newsletter on their "Accessible Broadband" project for the county - click here to access the newsletter.
 
March 25th latest - Cumbria CountyCouncil has outlined the scope of their proposed broadband contract and invited interest from potential suppliers - click here to see the outline in detail.
 
March 8th latest - Cumbria County Council are seeking financial support to roll out the Broadband Pilot across the whole of Cumbria under a single contract - click here to read the Council's request to Government for support.
 
March 1st Update - Cumbria County Council have now created a Broadband section on their website and have issued a progress update on how their thinking is developing on the Broadband Pilot - click here to access the update.
Cumbria has been Named as
one of Four Broadband Pilot Areas

Four rural areas that include some of the most remote and geographically challenging parts of the UK have been selected to pilot the next generation of high speed broadband. 

Each area will be allocated around £5-10m from a total of £530m funding to support the roll-out of next generation broadband between now and 2015 to areas that the market alone will not reach. 

Parts of Cumbria, the Highlands and Islands, North Yorkshire and the Golden Valley in Herefordshire will all be connected at speeds only usually found in densely populated urban areas. The pilot exercise will help establish the commercial costs and challenges involved in rolling out superfast broadband across the UK. 

Cumbria County Council is now working with BDUK on drawing up plans for the pilot - for the Cumberland News 10th December report on this, click here .  

Marie Fallon from Cumbria County Council included an update on the pilot plans in her presentation to the January 15th 2011 "Broadband Meets Localism" conference - to view her presentation to the conference, click here. 

Broadband Cumbria Campaign

There is a Cumbria-wide campaign for faster broadband, spearheaded by Rory Stewart, our local MP.
 
To visit the campaign website, click here.
 
Patterdale Parish has created its own "microsite" as part of this campaign - to visit the Patterdale microsite, click here.
 
 

New Rural Community Broadband Fund

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman , while on a visit to the Lakes on March 10th, announced a new Rural Community Broadband Fund, expected to be worth up to £20million, to allow rural communities – including those in the uplands – to apply for help with small scale broadband projects - " an innovative way of enabling people in rural areas, including hill farmers, to access the digital services and business opportunities most of us take for granted". More details have been promised for later in the year.

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