Emtelle Celebrates B4RN Supply Milestone
Hawick, Scotland, 22 September 2020- Broadband for the Rural North Ltd (B4RN), a professionally designed fibre optic network run by a dedicated local team of landowners and volunteers, and Emtelle, the global manufacturer of pre-connectorised, blown fibre cabling and ducted network solutions, have celebrated the installation of five million metres of Emtelle premium ducting solutions to connect thousands of rural communities in the North of England.
With the help of Emtelle’s innovative solutions and technical support, B4RN has been successfully building its own fibre network for years. Deployments involve digging the routes, laying the fibre and splicing the fibres – and it’s not just superfast but hyperfast, bringing broadband speeds of one gigabit per second to every home.
Since 2011, B4RN and Emtelle have worked in close collaboration and earlier this month they celebrated reaching the important milestone of the supply of five million metres of Emtelle ducting solutions. The event hosted at B4RN headquarters in Melling, Lancashire, involved Emtelle presenting the B4RN team with an exclusive golden 16/12mm Emtelle duct and a delicious, specially designed cake created by Hawick Baker named ‘Storm in a Teacup’.
Speaking on the milestone, Barry Forde, CEO at B4RN, said: “It has been a pleasure to work with Emtelle over the past nine years, it goes without saying that its solutions are of the highest quality. From supplying five million metres of ducts to providing on-going technical support, this strong relationship has allowed us to seamlessly connect thousands of homes and businesses across rural parts of Lancashire, Cumbria and Yorkshire. We look forward to ramping up our network deployments to bring more outstanding broadband to more rural communities.”
After years of slow broadband speeds leaving local residents struggling to stay connected, the rural community of Borwick were in need of a fast, reliable solution. While investigating options, Forde engaged in dialogue with Emtelle to discuss the products and solutions it could supply to facilitate such a project. Emtelle demonstrated that its FibreFlow™ Solution was ideal for the remote Fibre-To-The-Premises (FTTP) customers that B4RN wanted to connect.
Since then, Emtelle and B4RN have continued to work in tandem with Emtelle’s 7mm microducts being installed to the home from the bundle at the access chamber, while the 16mm microducts are used to provide large fibre count cables for B4RN’s backbone network. Emtelle provides product training and customer support to B4RN volunteers, so they are well equipped to solely deploy Emtelle microducts, ensuring the whole project remains within the community. Following the duct installation, Emtelle’s two and four blown fibre units are used to drop to the individual customer premises. This best practice has been shared widely over a series of regular Show-Tell Events hosted by B4RN and Emtelle where like-minded communities learn more about setting up their own fibre networks.
Simon Wade, Sales Manager at Emtelle, added: “We are honoured to be in partnership with B4RN, through sheer determination, it has not only brought a fit-for-purpose internet connection to rural homes, it has built a network that would be envied by most city dwellers. Thank you to the B4RN team for the custom – here’s to the next five million metres and our ongoing prosperous relationship.”
Read more on the celebrations here.
