Review
When we planned our move to a new home in the small village of Wray, just North East of Lancaster, I contacted our Broadband provider to check they would be able to maintain connection at our new address.Despite their 'No Problem' response, we immediately found out this wasn't the case - we were told "sorry we can't provide a service in the village". Like most people, we did most of our communications, including paying bills etc., on line, so this was a major setback for us.
To our surprise and delight, we were told of a simple solution - get the property connected to B4RN's network, throughout the village and surrounding area! I say simple, actually we had to dig a trench from the back garden wall across lawn and flower beds to the house and lay a fibre cable from the network run on the other side of the wall. Digging a trench when your house is full of boxes was challenging enough, we also had to find a way of drilling through a 0.7 metre thick stone wall. This was 'no problem' to the B4RN team of volunteers and staff. Within 6 hours we'd been loaned a 1 metre masonry drill bit and shown what we had to do to lay the cable safely (so we didn't accidentally cut through it in future years when working in the garden). Two days later, after stirling work by B4RN's connection team, we were up and running and have never looked back. 5 years on now and we've never had a problem, not even our connection speed dropping at 'peak demand' times. Our lawn quickly returned to its previous condition and 6 months later you couldn't tell where the cable had been run.
One or two friends have commented that their internet provider charges less than £30 per month; I take great delight in reminding them that we don't pay monthly landline charges any more and asking them what down/upload speeds they can get for their money. I also enjoy telling them about the quality of service we get from B4RN, second to none I would say.
In the current pandemic, internet networks and individual connections are - apparently - being stretched to the limit by greatly increased demand. We've not suffered this; however many people are involved in the online meetings I join, whatever the family is streaming etc., we always get a constant and uninterrupted connection.