U.K. village takes broadband destiny into its own hands

Tired of waiting for BT to extend its fiber-based network to their rural community, a group of U.K. businessmen in the Lyddington, Rutland village took matters into their own hands.

Eleven village residents put up over $4,600 a piece to fund the project, which is known as Rutland Telecom. Claiming to have the "fastest internet connection in the countryside," Rutland Telecom's customers pay a little over $46 a month for line rental, broadband connection and phone service.  

To build out the service, Rutland Telecom installed a cable to an existing "cabinet" that is then connected to existing lines to connect to the homes in the village.

Dr. David Lewis, managing director, Rutland Telecom said that its efforts are prompting other rural communities to jump into the broadband game as well. "We have now received approaches from many areas around the UK following our success in Lyddington and we are progressing the deployment of more street cabinets in Wales, Yorkshire and Leicestershire using private finance models," he said in a Telegraph article.

While BT is aggressively building out Fiber to the Cabinet (FTTC) and Fiber to the Home (FTTH) in major cities and towns, villages like Rutland tend to get left behind because like other large service providers there's a fear the low subscriber density won't give BT a payback on their investment.  

For more:
- The Telegraph has this article