Community broadband scheme - 5% annual return over 3 years

Murphy_The_Cat

Gadfium said:

B4RN is a well run scheme and has done very good work over the last few years. At some point in the not too distant future their target market will shrink considerably though. They are limited geographically and at some point will not be able to grow further. Secondly, they will come under competitive pressure from the new satellite competitors. The Starlink trial is going very well in America with download speeds as high as 120 Mbps. That network is growing very fast and it will be available to more and more people as the orbital shells fill up.

The UK government has also thrown half-a-billion taxpayer pounds into the bankrupt One Web system. They bought it thinking that they could build an alternative to the Galileo GPS system, but now they've realised that the sats are the wrong type and in the wrong orbits it looks like they'll be offering satellite broadband. Personally, I think that it will (figuratively) crash-and-burn.

At some point Blue Origin (the Bezos company) will also launch their Kuiper constellation, also providing satellite broadband.

These companies will be eating into rural broadband schemes such as B4RN.

I wonder if the B4RN geographical limitations are of their own making, rather than for any other reason i.e they have chosen to stay "close to home", rather than taking their offering further afield ?  Saying that, there are a couple of schemes that they are on with away from Home, so maybe they can do it if they want to.

The satellite options are something that may become available in the future, possibly, but the B4RN is available here and now (depending on location and level of takeup in a locale), plus it is astonishingly well priced.  From the few bits and pieces on Starlink pricing I could find, it is substantially more expensive than what B4RN charge and has a fraction of its speed -- but of course, wouldn't be reliant on a community coming together to bring the fibre to their area, to make B4RN viable.  You'd be able to sign up on your lonesome.

But wonderful that rural locations are getting access to very fast and hyperfast broadband, that the mainstream providers won't provide.

Gadfium

You can see their current and planned coverage here: https://b4rn.org.uk/b4rn-service/coverage-area/

You can see that to the south they are already bordering on Preston, Blackburn and Burnley, to the west by Lancaster and to the east and north by mountainous regions. They are naturally hemmed in.

The current Starlink beta costs are about $100 per month. Who knows how mnuch it will be in the future.

Then, of course, there is One Web, though I can't see why the $1 billion dollar bankrupt company will suddenly become successful, even with UK taxpayer money flooding in. Their model didn't work when SpaceX launches were fewer in number so I can't see how they'll cost in now, especially as they are buying launches on Russian rockets. The tech is years behind what Starlink are using, their launch cadence will be a fraction of SpaceX and they physically cannot launch as many sats per flight. The Starlink sats are in another league when it comes to the onboard technology and the genius idea of "flat-packing" the satellites on the launch frame means that fairing space is maximised. And, of course, once Starship and the Superheavy booster starts to fly and lift hundreds of Starlink satellites per launch (estimated at 400) it will be game over for One Web.

Murphy_The_Cat

An article in tonights NWE Mail that explains what B4RN is all about and the effect that it has on the rural area it serves.

(not sure about the papers headline though !)