Dear Editor
It has been a few years now since local resident Adrian Powell set up “South Oxfordshire Broadband” and started a trial based on a leased ADSL line into Watlington, for distribution to outlying villages by wireless. I was fortunate to be involved as a member of that trial, which as far as Ewelme was concerned, was beamed down via Britwell Hill Farm to Eyres Close then, apart from Adrian himself in Green Lane, was relayed over the fields to Neil Blake in Chaucer Court. The trial went very well, and for Ewelme and other outlying districts, residents were about to be offered a broadband service by wireless not otherwise available. Unfortunately, for South Oxfordshire Broadband, BT decided, against all expectation, to enable Wallingford Exchange for ADSL, which in addition to Watlington and Stadhampton exchanges, then made the Wireless Broadband business enterprise uneconomic. However, due to the distance between Wallingford Exchange and Ewelme, it was still touch and go as to whether some residents could get broadband anyway, albeit at the lowest speed. There were two problems really in determining whether Broadband was possible for an individual subscriber. The first was the aforementioned distance from the exchange, but the second was the actual quality of the cable cores, where some pairs for part of their length were made using aluminium wire. For a given distance, aluminium attenuates the signal at a greater rate than copper. There now seemed to be a bit of a lottery for village broadband applicants, where if they were closer to the distribution box at Kings Pool and were already connected via a low attenuation line, were likely to be lucky enough to be connected. Those already having low quality lines and/or probably to the West of Kingspool, weren’t able to get a connection.
The frustration for some Ewelme residents, who continued to be led to believe that they could still get broadband, either by advertisement or by unsolicited calls from BT India, has continued right up to the present, even though the BT field engineers consistently had to inform many unsuccessful applicants that is was a well-known fact in this village, that there were no suitable lines left!! Meanwhile, the original trialists plus a few other willing experimentalists within line-of-sight of the previously established wireless ‘nodes’, were lucky enough to be able to continue to enjoy a local broadband wireless network. This was possible due to the co- operation of Neil Blake, who was one of the fortunate villagers to get a broadband connection and willing to share his line with the legacy ‘Ewelme Wireless Mesh’ (which still exists). It was also Neil Blake who had long been determined to ascertain what could be done to overcome the broadband restrictions imposed on our rural community. To cut a long story short, meetings were arranged with BT, and as we have heard from Neil himself in a previous issue of the “News”, a retiring BT executive considered our case sympathetically, and arranged to leapfrog part of a local ‘five year plan’, to bring additional quality lines into Ewelme village.
Anyone who was interested in obtaining broadband in Ewelme, will now know that the new cable installation from Wallingford bridge was completed earlier this year. However, apart from the fact that BT retail (the people that sell the connection) don’t seem to communicate with Open Reach (the people that actually make the connection), to find out whether a subscriber’s current line actually needs upgrading using one of the newly available pairs, of all the residents I know who have applied for broadband, each has initially been told that broadband was not technically possible, until each could persuade their chosen ISP to raise this initial refusal as a fault. This seemed to be the only mechanism to get the local field engineers involved, who were then readily able to determine that use of one of the new pairs was necessary. I am now reliably informed that the final working additional core has now been allocated, and those who chose not to apply for broadband will have to wait until the remaining 50 cores within the new cable from Wallingford Bridge are connected to the exchange. However, it is understood that this requires some significant investment from SODC (due to trunking work across the bridge), so if you decide you do need broadband, contact your SODC councillor now to ensure there is a budget allocation!
Those of us who have at last been able to put away the faithful old dial up modem (but don’t throw it away!), owe a debt of gratitude to Neil Blake and his colleagues for having had the determination to investigate one way or another to provide broadband to those villagers previously unable to experience the joy of the high speed (albeit 500kbs) internet. Those of us who have relied on or still use the Ewelme Wireless Mesh also owe Adrian Powell a vote of grateful thanks, for not only initially setting up this stop- gap wireless system, but also for the amount of generous technical support he has given.
If, dear editor, you choose to publish this letter, it will be interesting to look back to old issues of the ‘NEWS’ in a few years time, using our 32Mbyte/sec bandwidth ‘laser-link’ Internet connection, and wonder what all the fuss was about!!
Chris Jenkins, Eyres Close
Dear Editor,
Please could you include the following Sunday Teas dates into the next edition of the Ewelme News:
Sunday teas is run by Friends of Ewelme School and is a pleasant and popular event, we would like to invite all along to enjoy a cup of tea and slice of homemade cake and help us to raise funds for our wonderful school.
Many thanks,
Sue Humphrey, Eyres Close, Ewelme
Dear Editor
I would be very grateful if you are able to find room in your June magazine for the following, plus an entry in your events diary:
Weekend of Music and Flowers at Berrick Salome June 9 and 10
On Saturday evening June 9 there will be a concert in St Helens Church featuring local Tenor Jonathon Arnold and organist Roger Derbyshire. Tickets include refreshments. This will be followed on Sunday 10 by Open Gardens around the village. A number of gardens will be open together with plant stalls, cream teas and displays of local art from 2pm – 5:30pm, so do come and visit a nearby parish. For further details on these events please call Marian Shaw 01865 890915 (concert tickets) or Jane Franklin 01865 891208 (open gardens).
All in aid of St Helens Church Berrick Salome.
With grateful thanks
Jane Franklin, St Helens PCC, Berrick Salome