All you need to know about Faster Village Broadband
10th November 2016Notes from village meeting with Voneus, 9 November 2016, to discuss potential for bringing faster broadband to the village
These notes are not full minutes of the meeting but encompass facts provided about the proposed new system
Voneus (www.voneus.com) and overview of service to be provided
Company established in 2011 and focused on broadband, as one part of their service, since 2015. Appointed as an approved installer by the Connecting Devon and Somerset Project. Has service level agreements in place and they are available to view on their website www.voneus.com
Briefly the plan is to install the necessary equipment to create a network covering the whole village, with the potential to include surrounding villages and hamlets too. Each house will have a CE radio receiver on the outside wall in line of sight with the sector antenna, a wired connection inside the house appropriate to the thickness of walls and a 4 point wireless router
24 megabits per second (mbps) as a minimum standard speed with an expected average speed of 50 to 100mbps for upload and download
Cost for installation: Free with a Connecting Devon and Somerset voucher (CDS) which must be claimed by the scheme closing date of 30 November 2016.
From £150 for those without a CDS voucher – the exact amount will vary according to the number of households who agree to sign up
Costs for service are £20 for 20GB per month or £34.99 per month for unlimited service
Entirely optional extra cost of £11.99 per month if telephone service is also required. This would be “Voice over internet provision” (VoIP). Telephone service (VoIP) can be added later on should you wish to do so
Those on £20 service can monitor usage using the Voneus “V manage portal” on their website. If users go over 20GB the service will stop but then can pay £1 per GB extra to extend or can upgrade to the unlimited service easily
75 individual households are needed to pledge their vouchers to Voneus by 9 December 2016 to achieve free installation for Buckland Dinham and any surrounding areas that elect to join in. This may include a phased roll-out for the outlying villages. If more than 75 is achieved the cost of installation for those without vouchers reduces
More than one application for CDS voucher is allowed if there is more than one property (e.g. an annex) or more than one landline
To pledge your interest in the service email Voneus on sales@voneus.com with name, address, contact number, voucher code, and package choice including whether or not telephone is needed
Answers to questions raised
Contract length will be 24 months at start and again at later renewal. If you leave the area the contract can be transferred to the new tenant/owner, or remain with you if you remain within the Voneus service area.
In the event that the delivered service fails to reach 24mbps, this falls below the “superfast” range and Voneus will be in default on the agreement and will not get paid for the installation
The service provision is by fixed wireless. Voneus will not be providing fibre to each property so it will not include TV service. However the band width should be sufficient to support Netflix
For the service to reach houses in Lower Street and other villages, a “hot point” will be used to bounce the signal
Burglar alarms or any other services that dial out cannot be used with the VoIP telephone system and would still need a BT phone line
Discussions about the conservation area and listed buildings have taken place with Conservation Department at Mendip. Any installation on a house in the conservation area must be done sympathetically (possibly including painting the receiver to blend in with wall colour) but listed buildings currently must have individual consent applied for by the resident. A specific position must be agreed for receiver and wiring on listed buildings. The Conservation Officer from Mendip has visited the village and has agreed to provide a check list which should help to reduce, if not remove, the need for individual Listed Building Consent
Voneus will carry out all the installation work either free of charge for those with vouchers or in quoted price for those without. They will provide a cherry picker, if required, for installing equipment and will arrange painting of receivers/equipment where necessary. They will prepare the mesh network for the village in advance to ensure maximum coverage
Delivery will be within 65 working days of order – so by end of March 2017 for those pledging their vouchers by 9 December
Those in long contracts with other suppliers may be able to get out of them. Try www.cable.co.uk for more information
Latency (i.e. identifiable pause in, for example, speech) is minimal at 0.15 millisecond. This is only likely to create an issue if you use your broadband connection for gaming. Most other users will not notice an issue
As a bonus, an installation will be made in the village hall free of charge and supply the unlimited service free of charge as part of the village package
Other villages already using the service can be identified for us to get references. Gary Day will provide these contacts
We own the equipment once installed but if it goes wrong Voneus will fix it as per their published Service Level Agreements
In response to question about failure rate of companies – 3 have failed so far. It is most likely that in the case of a failure the installed infrastructure would be quickly picked up by another company to provide a replacement service
In response to a question about the potential danger of radio waves crossing the village – it was explained that these waves are far less dangerous than those of mobile phones because these are very directional between single points and not diverse and searching as mobile phone signals
The VoIP phone package if taken would require different phones from those currently used for BT. An IP enabled phone would be required or you can connect most up to date mobile phones to the VoIP system
The support service is based in the UK with local call out engineers. A service level agreement covers the time that can be taken to repair a fault and this ranges from 8 hours to 36 hours depending on the severity of the fault. Detail of this and other queries can be found in the terms and conditions on www.voneus.com