New Broadband and WiFi massive upgrade

Over the last ten years we have tried our best to offer a decent WiFi and Broadband service to our guests in the Lodges and Cottage. We rented a dedicated line for our guests and bought the 'best' service available to us. The practical reality of living on the edge of a village with insufficient broadband capacity, is that our download speeds frequently dropped in the Lodges from a barely adequate 15-20 MB to 5MB or less (basically inadequate).

We had hoped to be included in the Government's roll out of the rural broadband improvement programme. Unfortunately we were unable to get any commitment from the Government's contractors for this roll-out of new fibre optic cable. We did not know if, or when, this might happen. In short we were left high and dry and caught between a 'rock and a hard place'.

We felt we had no choice given how poor the internet service was for our guests. As a result, we have taken the plunge to invest in our own private fibre optic cable, and committed to a substantial 3 year contract with our new broadband and phone supplier. Believe it or not, this cable runs all the way from the exchange in the village up to Cherry Lake Cottage! The total cost of this critical investment is in the region of £25,000.

A significant capital investment for us, coupled with higher on-going operating costs.

Clearly a big deal for us, but not one which is very visible to our guests. With the exception of the new telegraph pole by the stock pond, there is nothing visible for our guests to see.

A good WiFi service is a basic must have. After all most people coming from modernised towns and cities already get and expect good WiFi and streaming services.

After a lot of lapsed time, and a lot of stress, including a programming issue for part of the last weekend, I am delighted to say that all of our guests in the Lodges and Cottage are now benefitting from this new investment and enjoying much higher and more reliable down and upload speeds.

Our target download speed per Lodge is 45 -50 MBs. This is more than sufficient for on-line games, streaming and Zoom like meetings. Guests can now 'work from home' with confidence at Cherry Lakes. As you can seee from the image in the lead photo above we were nicely hitting this target when I ran this download test earlier this afternoon.

The technology and service now at last seems to be working reliably well. Long may that remain the case!