Well at last it seems to be official that Fibre-optic Broadband (FTTP) is finally coming to the valley.

It’s been a long and somewhat tortuous process but we’ve got there! However this news comes with a ‘Valley Health Warning’, it’s not ALL of the valley that will benefit. In their infinite wisdom OpenReach and/or Welsh Government – they both appear to blame the other – have decided that the top third of the valley isn’t worthy enough to join the 21st Century.

Yes, you read that correctly. From Ty Hir on upwards there will be no FTTP, just the current expensive satellite!

One of the reasons for setting up the CIC in the first place was to lobby for better connection. We went through a number of alternative technology companies, all of whom disappeared without trace having seen the difficulty of the topography of the valley, and all who said that full fibre was the only answer.

I’m very pleased that our constant nagging at OpenReach and others has had success, but i’m really upset that they have decided to create a two-tier valley when it must surely only cost a fraction more to run the cables another mile or so.

We haven’t given up and negotiations will continue, but at the moment it’s not looking too good.

I’m not bitter! Oh go on, yes I AM!

The Grwyne Fawr – a community divided!

Physically divided by our lovely river, but divided in so many other ways.

Children from one side of the valley go to one school, from the other to another school.

“Where is the Rave?” has been a regular question from Police call handlers as Gwent try to palm off the problem to Dyfed-Powys and vice versa.  It’s getting better, but it’s taken a lot of my time and effort.

Two different AM’s, two different MP’s. Even as a director of the CIC I’m only allowed to contact my own AM or MP.  How crazy is that?

Now we have the ‘Case of the Closed Recycling Centre’.  It used to be called the ‘tip’ but now we have to call it the Waste Transfer Station.  Well now the one at Llanfoist – just down the road and on the way to the shops in Abergavenny – has been closed to residents living on the Powys side of the river.

Monmouthshire CC, seemingly at a whim and without consultation or notification, has now made the valley’s Powys residents travel all the way to the far side of Brecon to deposit any bulky recycling that can’t be left at the side of the road every week.

That’s a round trip of over 50 miles for most of us, compared to a slight detour on the way to Waitrose.  So much for cutting vehicle emissions and saving the planet!

What makes it even more ridiculous is that Powys CC collect ALL the rubbish and recycling for Mons CC residents in the valley on a weekly basis.

I’ve been in touch with both Mons and Powys CC’s and they both basically wash their hands of the problem.  I’ve now raised it with Kirsty Williams and it looks as though that much maligned local treasure, the Abergavenny Chronicle, will be taking up the case.

-Update- Here’s the article on Page 3 of the Chronicle dated June 13th 2019

As with the BB issue also here on the blog, we try to do what we can, but we are seriously running out of breath waiting for answers!

Ian Mabberley

11-6-2019

Since I last updated the Broadband section of this blog in October 2018, a lot has happened – well, actually being honest a lot has NOT happened.

Openreach or how not to Reach into the Open

The Openreach Community idea looked a really good way of getting fibre to our properties, so I sat down with all the local info I could gather and amassed a list of some 37 telephone lines in and around the valley, all served from the same green box at Stanton.

I sat back and waited, then in the middle of December I got an e-mail!  Speedy stuff Broadband! it said

Political assistance

Our local Assembly Member on the Powys side (how annoying the county boundary can be!) is Kirsty Williams (who also happens to be Welsh Minister in charge of Education – so she’s at the ‘top table”).  With so many communities in her patch all suffering from the lack of BB, she organised a meeting in Talgarth with the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, Lee Waters.  Apparently BB is his responsibility – one would have thought something as important as BB would warrant a full Minister, not a Deputy, but apparently BB isn’t ‘devolved’ so doesn’t have a Welsh Government (WG) budget directly.

Apparently he has just let £22m in contracts to BT and Openreach to fix a number of what used to be known as ‘Not Spots” , now apparently ‘NGA White areas’.  This sounded a lot, until he explained that WG had allocated £80m.  Therefore they still have £58m sloshing around that they could easily allocate to communities like ours to purchase our system from Openreach as above – I said, a few times!  Needless to say it’s not that easy – procurement policies and state aid rules prohibit certain things and are good to hide behind – I know I’ve done it!

Also present were two senior people from Openreach, who are responsible for putting up the fibre cables.  One said nothing at all apart from his name, the other did respond to criticism but mainly in the way of “I’ll find out and get back to you.”

A very valid point was made by a gent from Kington who pointed out that the residents of say Cardiff had all this stuff landed on their doorsteps for free, without asking and without spending hours and hours trying to get something done.  It doesn’t seem fair that we should be left to moulder (or pay extortionate satellite charges) just because we live in the countryside – where in fact there is a greater social need for good connections.

Final member of the ‘top table’ was Viv Collins who is the Civil Servant in charge of the Superfast Cymru programme.

Having put our situation quite strongly during the meeting – tried every alternative solution currently on the market, but the topography of the valley doesn’t suit any of them; ridiculous quote from Openreach etc.  – I managed to get a word with Viv Collins at the end of the meeting. She suggested that she should get one of her team to visit the valley to understand the problems.

Again we wait without holding breath.

Ian Mabberley

11-6-2019

Following a chance encounter with a couple of Openreach technicians outside the house recently, who said they were upgrading the current copper wire system (!!).  I Tweeted my incredulity and almost by return received a note about a “Joint Funding Scheme for Communities”.

I’ve now completed this as best I can and have include 37 properties in and around the valley (including an interesting 23 Business lines).

The form went back to Openreach on Monday and now we await their calculations as to the potential costs.

Watch this space!!

Click on the links below for the Minutes of the AGMs of the Grwyne Fawr CIC

Grwyne Fawr CIC AGM 2016

GFCIC AGM Minutes 2017 Minutes of CIC AGM 2018

Draft Minutes of CIC AGM 2018

Happy 1st Birthday to the CIC!

Our new logo

Yes, it really was a full year ago when we got our Companies House registration.

For both of us Ian’s, it has been a busy year trying to get things done around the bureaucracy and intransigence of other organisations.

Ian the IT has been struggling to get BT to give him any idea of when fibre optic cabling might come to the valley – although interestingly it seems to be much in evidence in the Grwyne Fechan and on the road towards Llanbedr.    {In fact Ian has been struggling with all things BT, one of which left the whole valley with crossed dead lines for a week or so.  Thanks very much BT!  Not Ian’s fault. }

He is now working with a local Broadband supplier who hopes to be able to supply something clever, which will help the lower part of the valley in the first instance, with the hope that it can be extended further as technology allows.

Ian the Environment has finally managed to get some work underway in respect of restricting off-road motor bikes.  After an initial false start, we obtained a £10,000 grant from Welsh Government which has been added to by £5,000 worth of installation costs by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and new barriers and signs are being erected on the forest roads as I type.

We will be calling an AGM in the near future and hope to see all the Members for a good chat about where we go from here.

I’ve been in occasional correspondence with our new MP, who has kindly escalated our plight to the minister concerned. Here’s his latest reply: Letter from Ed Vaizey

Enjoy

The saga continues…

I went along to a session arranged by some part of the Welsh government, or Powys, or Cardiff council (must have nodded-off at that bit), about rural broadband for businesses. They put up someone to do the introduction who clearly needed a course on ‘broadband for beginners’, as most of the audience knew more about the subject than her. Gives us an idea why this is going to be hard.

Learnings from the (2 hour!) session. There weren’t many. Could have all been done in 30 minutes.

•  there is a ‘voucher’ available for business in Powys, for £3,000 towards getting broadband. See the Cardiff version of the scheme
• each business can have one voucher, but they can be pooled for a joint scheme – so there is hope!
• Each business has to apply for the voucher separately – I’ll go first, to scout out the process – then we can collectively get quotes from suppliers to install what we need.

There were a couple of suppliers there of BB services, but neither had any experience of putting BB on overhead cables. We will probably need this, as one had a rough estimate for buried fibre cabling: “about £100 per METER“. You do the sums to figure out what it would cost to bury a cable all the way from Stanton! But at least it rules-out that option.

So, next step is to apply for the Voucher: stay tuned for more…

–

One of the main drawbacks of living where we do is that broadband (BB) connections are expensive and unreliable (satellite BB doesn’t work well in the rain) or slow/non-existent (terrestrial BB).

So getting a BB service into the valley is a key requirement for us to run our lives and businesses. And it would also enable us – via some newly available technology from the mobile companies – to provide a mobile phone service in the valley. This is a critical safety requirement, not just a handy modern annoyance.

The good news is that we’re mostly in Powys, which has a good scheme for rural broadband, and a new local MP who has committed to helping communities like ours get connected.

The bad news is that all the broadband scheme seems to assume that the recipients are individual properties, some distance away from a BT ‘Green Box’.

We’re not like that

The the Grwnye Fawr valley is a distributed ribbon settlement (yes, I was paying attention in O-level Geography). So to get a piece of fibre from the BT Green Box to the last property is around 13-15 km. The £3000 subsidy currently on offer wouldn’t get a fibre more than a tiny fraction of that distance.

But such a cable would pass most of the other houses! So there’s no point each property getting its own piece of fibre all the way to the green box. A better solution would seem to be a single cable with drops for each property. Some are next to the cable part – others are a few 100s of meters from it:

Map of the Grwyne Fawr valley communications links and houses

So, what’s the solution? Get the CIC to try and arrange a single solution for all the properties in the valley.

But don’t hold your breath: as we don’t fit the pattern which government expects, expect that this will take some time.