Vital funding from Worcestershire County Council will connect 14 parish communities

Cambium Networks, leading provider of wireless broadband solutions, is supporting Airband Community Internet Ltd with its Point-to-Multipoint (PMP 450) and Point-to-Point (PTP 600) technology as the company sets out to improve, and in some instances create, broadband connections in 14 of Worcestershire’s parish communities of approximately 2000 residents and 200 businesses.

Worcestershire County Council and partners are driving to increase broadband speeds locally so that 90% of businesses and residents have access to superfast broadband by 2015 with speeds of a least 2mbps for everyone else through funding of up to £8.5 million from the county’s tax payers. The County Council has also enabled 14 parishes to have enhanced broadband speeds in a unique scheme, made possible through Sustainable Transport and Green Infrastructure funding – the grants have been made available to communities which may not benefit from the countywide superfast broadband deployment.

Airband was selected by Worcestershire County Council and community representatives to deliver enhanced broadband services to 14 parish communities which applied for the funding. Airband was chosen because of their experience of providing local community broadband and the packages they offer to other Internet Service Providers, residents and local businesses.

Airband chose Cambium’s PMP 450 and PTP 600 solutions as they will enable Next Generation Access speeds of 24Mbps and above in areas with low bandwidths, and those that are currently without broadband. The carrier-grade solution will enable Airband and its resellers to offer wide-range connectivity, scalability and high reliability for small and medium enterprises and residents in the rural area.

“Broadband in rural areas has been underserved for a long while. For residents broadband is no longer viewed as a luxury, it has become essential. Equally, for small businesses decent broadband is now vital to run and maintain a business,” said Ian Bayly, Vice President EMEA Sales and Marketing at Cambium Networks. “This project is also a breakthrough as BDUK rubber stamped the project for state aide support to use Cambium Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband technology. This will give confidence to other councils that Cambium FWA is a technology that will provide a real benefit to rural areas, now!”

Armed with Cambium technology and its own experience and expertise, Airband is perfectly placed to support the local community by providing crucial connectivity to both the un-served and underserved. Redmond Peel, Managing Director at Airband, said: “Our partnership with Cambium has enabled us to quickly and cost effectively deliver high speed broadband to businesses and residents that have been struggling with slow or non-exist broadband for years, while also giving us the confidence that we’ll be able to continue to meet their needs for some time to come.”

Cllr Simon Geraghty, Cabinet Member responsible for Economy, Skills and Infrastructure for Worcestershire County Council, said: “We are already hearing about the better speeds and great feedback from these communities. The County Council made this funding available as we knew the difference this would make to local people and importantly, to businesses with making sure the county is open for business is an absolute priority. Working with the communities has been fantastic and it is great to hear about the difference that this is making for people living, working or running a business in these areas.”

The fourth-generation PMP 450 fixed wireless broadband access solution delivers the capacity and performance required to meet the increasing demand of today’s market. Utilising a combination of very high throughput, low latency and GPS synchronisation, the PMP 450 enables service providers to rapidly deploy new services and increase revenue and profitability while realising a much faster return on their investment. With long range connectivity of up to 20 miles and its Near and Non Line-of-Sight capabilities, the solution provides the industry’s best performance in the most challenging deployments.

Little Witley parish; North-West Malvern Consortium, comprising the parishes of Brockleton, Kyre, Hanley, Rochford, Eastham, Lindridge, Mamble, Bayton; and The Redditch Travel Arc Consortium, comprising the parishes of Tibberton, Crowle, parts of Hanbury, Stock and Bradley and Feckenham, will benefit from the access to faster broadband with work anticipated to be completed by the end of June 2013.