Thirty residents are now better connected after an internet upgrade.
Thirty residents in Borrowdale, which is situated at the foot of Honister Pass, within the Lake District National Park’s Borrowdale Valley, are now enjoying a broadband network that offers speeds of up to one gigabit bit per second (1Gbps) using Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) technology – where fibre is built directly from the local exchange all the way to people’s properties.
To build the new ‘full fibre’ network, Openreach engineers and Battersby Civil Engineering installed more than two kilometres of fibre cables, erected telegraph poles and dug more than 1,500 metres of new underground duct along country roads, across fields and even over a river and a beck.
In the short time since the network was switched on, the new technology has already made a difference to the lives of people living and working in the community.
Hotel owner, David Oglethorpe, can now offer all of his guests Wi-Fi and feels confident that the card payment machine will work when they check out.
Local resident, Kevin Crisp, is now able to long-distance video call his family and stream TV programmes for the first time. And Michael Chapman, one of the team who led the community’s quest for faster broadband, is just blown away by the difference the technology has made to life in the valley.
David Oglethorpe, who owns and runs the Glaramara hotel, said: “People come to our remote valley to relax and enjoy our amazing scenery but in recent years there’s been an increasing demand to still being able to stay connected to the outside world.
“Teenagers don’t want to holiday with their parents if they can’t get online and keep in touch with their friends. And in the evenings people want to catch up on their favourite boxset or upload their photos to social media platforms – online activities that most people take for granted.
“Until now that has been impossible here – on a bad day we’d be lucky to get the card machine working but now I can offer Wi-Fi throughout the hotel whether that’s for overnight guests or walkers stopping by for lunch or coffee.
“And I’m really excited to be able to expand our business offerings. We have huge potential to offer team building and conference type events but without decent broadband, it was a no go. It will definitely give us another string to our bow.”
For Michael Chapman, a driving force behind getting ultrafast full-fibre to the valley, the new network is everything he hoped it would be.
He said: “The technology is amazing – this is the best thing to happen in Borrowdale since the arrival of the telephone. No more twiddling my thumbs in front of the computer, now things happen instantly. Life in the Borrowdale Valley is transformed.”
Kevin Crisp added: “Having full-fibre broadband in our remote corner of Cumbria has improved everything we do online. We can send photos on WhatsApp, enjoy high-res video calls with friends and family and no longer endure endless buffering and interruptions.
“We live in an area with no terrestrial TV signal, so being able to stream TV and films is just brilliant. From working from home to being able to use cloud services to store and share family photos and videos. It’s just a life-changer.”
