| Synopsis |
During early 2003 it appeared that the roll-out of BT's ADSL would not
include villages such as Reynoldston, an appearance supported by BT's
wish to have 300 (out of about 150!) houses "sign up" before they would
consider converting our exchange, so an informal group started to look
at satellite based alternatives. The costs for commercially managed
systems were unrealistic, and so we decided to look at a community
project. Grant funds became available through a sustainable development
fund, and a formal committee was set up, under the auspices of the
Village Hall Association. Over 50 households indicated their wish to
join - a large increase over our projections!
Installation of the satellite system was initially trouble-free, and
early tests showed that standard WiFi (802.11b) equipment could, with
suitable antennae, easily span the distances over a few miles that were
required, but then we hit severe problems with hidden nodes causing
interference, channel availability and access point log-on, so we
changed to a commercial specialist equipment (based on 802.11b but with
overlay protocols) to solve these problems, and with that equipment, the
roll-out proceeded remarkably well.
Three years later, the system is still in use much appreciated by the
community, and remains in use by roughly the same number of users,
despite the availability of ADSL. We have switched to an uncontended
ADSL line ourselves as the back-haul to reduce latency, and avoid
technical problems specific to the satellite system we had. Every year
we expect to see loss of customer numbers, and think it will be time to
wind-up the system, but every year so far we are proven wrong!
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