WiMax speeds Cybermoor's rural broadband

A rural wireless broadband network is upgrading its infrastructure to next-gen WiMax kit to improve reliability, boost speeds - and even pave the way for telemedicine.

The Cybermoor network at Alston Moor in Cumbria is a community-owned venture that claims to have the highest penetration of broadband in any rural area in England.

The region is one of the most sparsely populated areas of England and was deemed non-viable when first-generation broadband was being deployed by BT - leading the community to set up its own wireless network, back in 2002.

Today the network covers about 80 per cent of the parish and "virtually 100 per cent of the population", according to Cybermoor project manager Daniel Heery.

BT broadband has also found its way into the area but Cybermoor continues to thrive with about a third of the households in the area signed up.

Cybermoor's infrastructure upgrade was prompted by increasing problems with reliability as the original Cisco Aironet system aged.

"The old network was never really designed to last this long and so we reached a stage where we had to upgrade. I think the improved reliability which the network will bring will enable us to get more customers on board because we're in an area where ADSL coverage can be quite patchy it means that we can actually give people who live a long way from the BT exchange a really good quality of service," said Heery.

The spectrum the kit used was unlicensed and interference had become more of a problem. "It did become prone to interference from home wireless networks and, as more and more people wanted home wireless networks, that problem increased and gave us more of a support overhead," he added.

Working with Proxim and its distributor partner 802 Global, Cybermoor is currently replacing the Cisco kit with Proxim Tsunami MP.11 licence-free WiMax radios - which use 5.8GHz band-C spectrum - and Heery estimates all customers will be upgraded by summer. The overall cost of the upgrade is between £180,000 and £200,000.

"We'd started to upgrade the backbone link between the different villages in the area using Proxim because that met the specs and that was extremely reliable so when we came to look at the end user connections… we decided to go with Proxim because we felt comfortable using them and they had that track record with us," he explained.

Another benefit of upgrading to WiMax kit is the speed boost: Cybermoor now will be able to offer speeds of up to 12Mbps.

"We've seen the demand for data carried over our network increase massively since we put it in. It seems to be that now more and more people want to use things like iPlayer," Heery said.

The speed boost will also open the door to services like e-health and the organisation is now working with the NHS in Cumbria to get a contract in place to start delivering telemedicine.

"One of the main drivers for the project is around improving the delivery of public services to individuals so the new network will enable us to use more telehealth devices which will help to reduce the bill to the NHS as well," Heery noted.