A unique partnership between local and international actors is helping communities in the southeast to deliver state-of-the-art broadband services in rural areas.

The award-winning Broadband 4 Our Community (B4OC) group in Piltown-Fiddown broke the mould nationally by developing a dedicated broadband facility for the south Kilkenny parishes after the area was excluded from the National Broadband Plan.

The community-owned organisation offers high-speed (150mbps) broadband packages to local businesses and homes at competitive prices, with all profits after maintenance invested back into the community.

B4OC already has 50 homes and businesses in the Piltown-Fiddown area connected and plans to have 750 customers in total once the service is fully rolled out next year.

Initiative

Kilkenny LEADER now plans to use this community-led model to deliver broadband to other areas in the county which are not covered by the National Broadband Plan.

The initiative is supported by B4OC and the Brussels-based European Network for Rural Development (ENRD).

The regional development agency is hosting a series of workshops and seminars across Kilkenny, which are designed to help local community and voluntary groups to “take charge of their digital future” and emulate the success of B4OC.

B4OC can be more affordable than packages offered by commercial operators

Kilkenny LEADER CEO Declan Rice hopes the process will encourage other community-owned broadband projects to emerge.

He said initiatives such as B4OC boost remote working opportunities and promote rural enterprises, while making small towns and villages more attractive places in which to live, work and raise a family.

“The entirely community owned and run Broadband 4 Our Community network has already transformed how locals live, work and study,” Rice claimed.

“Crucially, as a non-profit company, B4OC can be more affordable than packages offered by commercial operators in equivalent areas,” he said.

“Profits generated locally by B4OC above maintenance costs will also be ploughed back into community projects in the Piltown-Fiddown area,” he added.

Rice said Kilkenny LEADER is currently working with experts to help identify and prioritise communities in terms of their potential and capacity to replicate the success of Piltown-Fiddown.

“As the process is one of ‘helping communities to help themselves’, they will need to demonstrate an appropriate sustainable scale to their community; the capacity to understand and deliver the project and be situated to allow linkage to fibre optic cable linkage to the internet,” he said.

Eager to help

B4OC project manager Jim O’Brien said the group is eager to help other communities emulate what they have achieved.

“What we did can definitely be replicated elsewhere,” O’Brien insisted.

“To make this work in other communities, you need a steering group with a mixed skill set, time and determination.

"We are fortunate to have a representative body with accounting, legal, telecommunications and community-project management experience,” he said.

However, O’Brien warned that communities will have to “burn shoe leather” to make the local service a success.

“You need buy-in from the entire community and you need to knock on many doors if you are to run cables on poles or underground across people’s homes or land,” he pointed out.

“But any group starting out on this journey will have the benefit of our experience on suppliers, components, solutions and problems you can run into along the way.

"We didn’t have anyone to turn to, so we’re only too glad to share the experiences we’ve had and really make this work for Kilkenny and for rural Ireland.”

The Kilkenny LEADER seminars kick off in Freshford on Tuesday 25 October and culminate with a joint seminar in Piltown on Saturday 19 November.