Rural Connectivity and Data Poverty
The issues:
Given the rural nature of Bellingham and the North Tyne area and its relative isolation, it is increasingly important to maximise connectivity options. Many areas still have poor connectivity and even mobile networks have, in some cases, only covered our area in the last several years, with significant gaps still existing in their coverage.
Good data connectivity is vital for the local area for a number of reasons, including:
Quality rural connectivity enables residents across the wider area to stay in touch with each other, combatting the risk of social isolation.
It allows residents to access services such as banking, information, shopping and healthcare - all of which are increasingly having to be accessed online.
Good quality connectivity is vital for local, rural businesses. There are a significant number of small local businesses in the North Tyne and Redesdale area and these need good quality, reliable internet connections to enable their survival and growth.
Connectivity for local events - regional shows and other major events, such as markets, attract large numbers of visitors as well as local traders. This puts strain on local masts, meaning that they can easily become congested, leading to traders being unable to take card payments.
Rural connectivity in our area has some additional challenges, however:
Data poverty - over 7 million people within the UK are classed as suffering from data poverty, with this number expected to rise sharply. This means people have limited or no access to the internet - again making it difficult to find work, shop, and manage services. Rural areas are often disproportionately affected by this.
Lack of interest from mobile and fixed line providers - given the relative isolation and low population density in the area, mobile networks and broadband providers are typically not interested in investing in systems, leading to the area being among the last to access services such as gigabit broadband and 4G/5G data coverage.
Emergency communication and resilience - in the event of storms (such as 2021’s Storm Arwen and 2022’s Storm Eunice) highlighted a very poor level of communications resilience in the event of power outages. These storms led to power outages of up to a week across much of the area. Mobile phone masts lasted 2 hours on battery back-up and even broadband failed within 24 hours or so. This led to residents being unable to access support, information or even access emergency support for an extended period, damaging local businesses and causing a significant health and safety risk for residents, especially those who may be vulnerable. The switch by BT to a Digital Voice product which needs mains power rather than traditional copper phone lines and the recent removal of all public payphones in the area added to the connectivity issues.
NT&RCP has undertaken a number of initiatives throughout 2021-22 to help deal with these problems - initially within Bellingham as a major population hub, but we hope that the learnings from this will allow us to help other smaller communities in the North Tyne and Redesdale area.
Projects:
Gigabit Broadband Support
As part of the Government Rural Gigabit broadband scheme, local champions undertook the work to attract a company to take advantage of the Government voucher scheme to install gigabit broadband in the Bellingham area. WeFibre was the preferred partner and offered symmetric gigabit broadband for around £20 per month - both for residential and for small business customers.
NT&RCP was keen to support the rollout, seeing that it would provide a much needed service to the area, as residents were currently averaging around 20mb as a download speed. Having access to relatively low cost, high speed internet would reduce data poverty and help local businesses keen to operate online.
In order to help the process, NT&RCP offered a section of land behind its property in Station House for the WeFibre cabinet to be placed. This brought forward the project and cleared a significant amount of red tape as it avoided having to request cabinet installation on public land.
In return, NT&RCP was offered a free gigabit connection in perpetuity, which it decided to use on a public Wi-Fi project (see below).
Public Wi-Fi Projects
NT&RCP’s trustees decided to install a public Wi-Fi network to run across the centre of the Bellingham to improve connectivity in the local area.
This was agreed by the trustees as it was felt that having a free public Wi-Fi network would have a number of advantages:
Helping local residents with data poverty as it provides a free data access if they have run out of mobile data and have no access to broadband. The network was designed to require users to log in again after a period of activity, to ensure that it was not seen as a replacement for data packages for users living in the centre of the village
Helping to attract tourists by ensuring they have a good internet connection during their stay
Offering advertising to local businesses via a landing page for users
The Wi-Fi was to be connected via NT&RCP’s free gigabit connection from hosting the WeFibre cabinet on its grounds.
Network router and point to point link positions were planned throughout the village. Several local businesses and organisations were approached to see if they would host the infrastructure. Given the low energy consumption of the kit, the cost to the hosts was negligible and all were happy to offer space for the necessary kit.
The main connection was within the Town Hall, with the overall coverage operating across the centre of the village.
The Wi-Fi network also allowed further expansion into several key areas:
Wi-Fi support for local community organisations
The central Wi-Fi network was expanded with links into several key buildings to aid the community groups that operated within them. These included:
Reed Hall - this organisation provides a space for local social provision, including local youth groups, toddlers and young mothers groups, as well as army cadets and social events for local residents. NTRCP supported the creation of high speed Wi-Fi throughout the building and garden area to support these activities.
Bellingham Town Hall - this space is rented for events, clubs and even local markets and fairs. Use of payment card terminals by retailers at these events were often problematic due to poor mobile signal. NTRCP extended the community Wi-Fi network into the Town Hall to help support its ability to offer a comprehensive service to all users and traders. This covers the main hall as well as the meeting room.
St Cuthbert’s Church - since COVID, this Grade I listed building has been live streaming its services as well as holding them in person. Due to a loss of their previous wired internet access to another nearby building, NTRCP was able to provide them with point to point link access to the Internet via public Wi-Fi, allowing for resumption of streamed services to the wider area.
Community Pantry (see separate project page) - the Community Pantry was a key scheme for NTRCP and has successfully reduced food waste for local residents and businesses. NTRCP’s installation of a Wi-Fi network across the centre of the village has enabled the use of security cameras, which were necessary as part of the Pantry’s security and for insurance purposes.
Other benefits:
NT&RCP has noted that the new Wi-Fi system has enabled us to plan to help with other future initiatives, such as being able to offer support for security cameras and Christmas light controls for the local Parish Council.
Another Village Added!
Following the successful build of the Bellingham network we have also built a network in the neighbouring village of Falstone bringing mobile internet and Wi-Fi Calling to the village for the first time! Coverage is currently from around the riverside past the Village Hall and Playground through the centre of the village past the Tearooms, car park to around the Black Cock and bus stop.
The key reasons listed above apply to Falstone too as well as the additional benefit of providing mobile coverage where there was currently none.
Network Redundancy
Both of our Wi-Fi networks have partial power redundency so in the event of power failures (which happen here a lot!) the network in and directly around the Village or Town Hall will stay up for around 48 hours allowing residents to access emergency and power company information online as well as make calls.
We'd like to thank our friends at Northern Powergrid for a gererous grant award that was used to purchase the backup batteries used in our network.
During Storm Arwen in 2021 parts of the area were without power for almost a week and with the move by BT to Digital Voice as well as the removal of Payphones in the area, a large number of people lost their home phone connection as well as their internet access. As the local halls are an emergency hub for the surrounding area it gives residents a place to go to access online information as well as make calls etc in the event of another similar situation.
Event Wi-Fi
As mentioned earlier, the North Tyne and Redesdale areas have a rich tradition of agricultural , and music shows, with major events in Bellingham, Falstone and other locations throughout the season.
In spite of the traditional natures of many of these events, modern technology is beginning to be required for a range of items, from online tickets to card machines for the show and for individual retailers. Due to mobile phone masts in the area having relatively low capacity, popular events can see internet signal become congested and too slow to be usable.
As part of NT&RCP’s investment in Wi-Fi the charity has obtained enough high capacity kit to offer point to point links and Wi-Fi coverage for these local events for free. This was trialled at Bellingham Show in 2022 and, in spite of very high numbers of visitors, it provided a reliable internet connection for traders and show staff. In future shows, this is planned to be extended to allow for Wi-Fi internet access for all visitors as well. NT&RCP intends to approach other shows and events in the area to help support their operations in the same way.
Communication Resilience
Bellingham and the surrounding area were badly affected by Storm Arwen in 2021, with power being lost in Bellingham and across the area for several days for most properties, and over a week in some other nearby locations. Many areas, including Bellingham, were cut off by road, as well as losing all internet and mobile phone signal, making offering support very difficult. Storm Eunice had a similar effect on the area in early 2022, showing a serious problem with resilience. Throughout these periods, the loss of phone and internet was a particularly hazardous one, as residents had no ability to easily make emergency calls.
During Storms Arwen and Eunice, when power was lost to the area, the mobile phone masts lost power after around 2 hours and, for the EE mast, service was not restored for almost a fortnight. Internet access, however, was available for longer, with backup power to the cabinets lasting around 24 hours. Unfortunately, the majority of people were unable to access the Internet as their homes had no power. This left them entirely cut off from accessing support and emergency help if needed for an extended period - especially a problem for vulnerable residents.
NT&RCP obtained funding to install two uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) to provide back up power for a central section of our Wi-Fi infrastructure in the Town Hall. Each UPS offered 1.6kWh of backup power – which would run the routers and point to point links for up to 40 hours maximum. Local residents would be able to have emergency access to the internet and, more importantly, to emergency support via existing Wi-Fi Calling solutions in the event of power loss for an additional 24 hours or so (until the generators/back-ups for the cabinets and exchange fail), which could be vital for those in need. The Wi-Fi network is being designed as multi-WAN, meaning that in the event of one local fibre network failing it can switch onto another fibre or even cellular network if either MBNL or CTIL sites are still up and running. We also have a Starlink Satellite system that can be quickly deployed and used as a backhaul feed for the network maximising the length of time that the system will continue to work after a power outage. The Wi-Fi network covers both Bellingham Town Hall and the Reed Hall – both places that do/are planned to act as hubs for the local community in the event of power loss or other problems.
NT&RCP is also working with local fibre network providers to look at how the length of run time for the cabinets can be extended in the event of a prolonged outage. This would enable the Wi-Fi system to last even longer.
Being able to offer Wi-Fi services with NT&RCP branding on the landing page has also helped to significantly boost public awareness of the charity and its operations, which is a key part of attracting volunteers as well as ensuring that more people are aware of the services that we offer.
The Future
We hope to take the learnings from these projects and look at whether they can be applied successfully to other population centres within the wider North Tyne and Redesdale areas in places where it could make a similar difference to local residents, tourists, businesses and groups as well as boost communication resilience. We would also like to provide quick to deploy solutions to small villages where we don't have a full Wi-Fi network to give them the same emergency resilience.
