Remote communities set up on next-gen wireless broadband by Proxim

Communities have been connected, new jobs have been created and property values have increased by 25 percent with those areas that have been involved in Cybermoor’s Broadband Project.

It was announced recently by a leading provider for end-to-end broadband wireless systems that offers users quadruple play services, Proxim Wireless Corporation that an agreement has now been signed with Cybermoor Ltd, market leader in the UK for community broadband projects, to use Proxim’s wireless broadband solutions to upgrade the existing Cybermoor network on Alston moor.

As well as being one for the most remote market towns in England Alston Moor is also the highest, and this means that there is no availability of standard high-speed broadband services. Alston Moor quickly became known as the “Broadband Capital of Britain” and broadband connections could be found in 40 percent of homes in the area with the then super-fast 1Mbps download speeds following the installation of the UK’s first rurally based wireless broadband network by Cybermoor in 2002. Everyone in the Alston Moor community will soon be able to receive a wireless broadband service of up to 12 Mbps with the latest upgrade with Proxim equipment.

Following funding by the British government to look into how rural economies could be boosted with the help of computers and digital communications back in 2001 the Cybermoor social enterprise began.

The provision of more than 600 computes for Alston Moors residents, which was enough for every home in the community to have a computer installed and cost residents nothing, was the first phase for the use of the funding from the government. Providing a broadband network that all the computers in this community could connect to was the next step. Due to the age of the equipment being used equipment failure is becoming more common and home Wi-Fi network interference is a constant issue, although the original 802.11b wireless network is still working today. Most of the interference will be reduced because the new Proxim network uses the 5.8GHz frequency spectrum.