Smallest County - Biggest Broadband

A tiny village in Oakham has raised £37,000 to offer 200 homes the super-fast broadband that neither BT nor Virgin could deliver.

Getting fast broadband to rural areas has recently been an issue for political debate and is back in the spotlight as the government shelves its funding plans. The residents of Lyddington had tried all the big suppliers and had been told that it was not economically viable to provide fast services to the village. In the end they decided they couldn’t wait and have set up their own Telecoms Company.

It is estimated that around 2.5 million homes in the UK cannot get broadband speeds of more than 2Mbps. Award winning Rutland Telecom now offer the residents of Lyddington speeds of up to 40Mbps (megabits per second). The scheme was a joint effort between villagers fed up with slow broadband speeds and a local ICT firm that was reselling BT's broadband.



The process was a slow one but Rutland Telecom, with the help of Ofcom, have had their very own fibre-optic cable put into a street cabinet in the village. After two years of persistence the network is up and running and already has 50 customers.

 

"For the first time in UK telecommunications history the telephone lines of customers are completely cut off from the local BT exchange," said Rutland Telecom director Mark Melluish.

Rutland Telecom has been approached by 40 other rural community groups to see if a similar solution is possible in their area. It is on the verge of launching similar schemes in neighbouring Leicestershire and one in Wales.




Results by independent analyst Speedtest.Net demonstrate Rutland Telecom broadband speeds are over 3x faster than all other ISPs.