New Year revolution as fast broadband arrives in St Brides

Whilst only about 7 miles between both Cardiff and Newport, the resident s have been campaigning to get decent broadband into the village for over 7 years. Until now, residents were lucky to receive even 512kbps and many were reliant on 3G mobile ‘dongles’ or dial-up for a service.

From today, with the help of Welsh Internet Service provider (ISP) Spectrum Internet, St Brides will have their own fast broadband service expected to deliver realistic speeds of around 8 -18Mbps to each property depending on the distance they are from the cabinet. In the future, the solution will be able to be upgrades to speeds of up to 40Mbps.

The community project has been paid for using the Welsh Government Broadband Support Scheme enabling each household to apply for up to £1,000 to pay towards the cost of the infrastructure.

The creative thinking of Spectrum Internet has enabled a ‘microwave to the cabinet’ solution meaning the broadband is delivered in the ‘normal way’ over the telephone line. Spectrum Internet have worked directly with Openreach to provide the first community sub-loop unbundle solution in South Wales.

Resident community champion who rallied the village into action, Catherine Linstrum was the first person to receive the new broadband service.

Ms Linstrum who is TV documentary director said, “The whole village is so pleased to eventually join the world online. We have campaigned and petitioned on this for years and with the support of Spectrum Internet we’ve succeeded at last!”

She added; “When you can’t get broadband speeds of even 2Mb you cannot do things most people take for granted like sending or receiving emails with attachments, shop online or use social network sites like Facebook.”

And it’s not just the working population in the village or residents who want to work from home who have signed up. Retiree Diana Westmoreland was just quick to subscribe for broadband and throw away her mobile dongle that was only delivering around 56kbps.

Resourceful Ms Westmoreland, 62, was making regular trips into cafés in town to download the online art history courses she wanted to study and upload photos to send via email to friends and family.

“Increasingly everything is being made available and more cost-effective on the Internet ,” she said. “For instance, it’s so much easier to buy your car tax online rather than stand in a queue at the Post Office and I don’t want to be left out if there are ways to save money by ordering online for things such as insurance.”

Diana is also looking forward to using her Skype account from home so she can contact family members who live in Australia.

The team started talking to residents just over a year ago and managed the whole process of gaining planning permission and getting the cabinet and equipment installed on site.

Claire Brown, Marketing Manager at Spectrum and who has worked with the residents to help make it happen was on site when the first residents received broadband delivering the parcels with their routers.

She said, “This has been an exciting project for whole team at Spectrum and it is satisfying to see the results – a village of happy online residents with more still joining.”

Managing Director of Spectrum Internet, Giles Phelps, said “the majority of the company’s growth has come from providing business Internet services but providing specialist residential schemes demonstrates our in-house technical expertise and proves you don’t need to be huge corporation to solve the broadband issues around the UK.”