An IT expert fed up with the slow internet connection in his rural home built a new broadband network for the whole village – and is now looking for someone to take it over.
Rob Anderson lives in the village of Iken in Suffolk and was frustrated by the slow internet speeds that made it impossible to browse the internet or work from home.
So, he decided that the best thing to do was to install his own superfast broadband, increasing speeds in the village from 0.25Mbps to 25Mbps.
Rob Anderson with wife Melita and son Bill pictured in front of his transmitters that give superfast broadband to 29 out of 40 households in Iken, Suffolk
Since then 29 out of the 40 households in Iken have signed up to Mr Anderson’s service, which they say is much quicker and cheaper than what was being provided by the big communication companies.
But now, he is selling his house and is also looking for somebody to take over Bootstrap Broadband, the name of his network.
He has put his £575,000 house, called Boot Cottage, on the market.
One of the village transmitters in Iken that relay superfast broadband to the houses that have purchased Bootstrap Broadband
Mr Anderson began rebooting his village when he discovered the neighbouring hamlet of Snape was able to receive good WiFi through underground cables.
With permission, the 47-year-old, a chief technical officer for a financial services firm, installed a connection to Snape’s fibre broadband and then got the two pubs there, the Plough and Sail and the Crown, to act as the base station and relay transmitter.
This allowed him to beam the WiFi to Iken via point-to-point links.
That was in 2014 and since then 75 per cent of the homes in Iken have signed up to Bootstrap Broadband.
Each property has a WiFi transmitter fitted to their roof, which have to be in sight of each other for the connection to work, and then a wireless router in their house.
A picture of the routers that are used to help spread the wi-fi network from house to house with Mr Anderson hoping that every house is eventually online
Mr Anderson fields calls when neighbours have IT problems and fixes or replaces the equipment if it stops working. Unlike big broadband companies no-one is tied into the service, they have no minimum contract and can cancel or change their package at any time.
He charges £90 for installation and then offers them different packages from £25 to £45 a month for speeds of up to 25Mbps but said he barely makes any profit from it.
Villager Dominic Kilburn said Mr Anderson has transported the village into the 21st century.
Mr Kilburn, 52, runs a kayak and canoe business from his home, as well as holiday cottages, all of which rely on the internet for people to make bookings.
He also has three children who need access to the internet to be able to do their homework.
He said: ‘We used various companies – Sky, TalkTalk and BT – but whoever we were with and whatever they promised we never got more than 0.5Mbps. It was hopeless.
Mr Anderson, 47, is now looking for someone to take over Bootstrap Broadband as he is selling his £575,000 house, called Boot Cottage
‘When Rob started to talk about his system we jumped at it. It transformed our internet use.
‘We can use the internet like anybody else, it’s fantastic. The system is reliable and it’s cheaper than the big companies.
‘It’s bizarre how it works but everybody in the village walks around with a smile on their face now.
‘Everyone depends on it now and other remote villages near us are very envious so long may Rob’s system last.’
Mr Anderson began setting up the broadband in his village when he discovered the neighbouring hamlet of Snape was able to receive good WiFi through underground cables
Mr Anderson, a married father of one, said: ‘When we moved in the broadband was awful, it made it very difficult to work from home.
‘I read about a villager in Scotland who had done something similar so I got in contact with him and he told me what he’d done and I thought ‘I can do this’.
‘I’ve got a lot of network and IT skills in my day job but I didn’t know much about WiFi so it was a bit of a learning curve but there is lots of help out there.
‘Everyone in the village was very supportive and very keen, which was great because the network needs a clear line of sight to work so people are relying on their neighbour to bounce the signal for them.
Villager Dominic Kilburn praised the broadband network and said Mr Anderson has transported the village into the 21st century
‘You just wouldn’t be able to do that with a bigger company.
‘Now the internet is fast and people can download, everything works great. The transmitters we use are even reliable in bad weather.
‘I’ve been contacted by a few other villages interested in doing it.’
He has now put his four bed house on the market with estate agents Bedfords and Suffolk Coastal, who both say good broadband makes his house more desirable.
Tim Day, of Suffolk Coastal, said: ‘Speed of broadband now forms a significant part of the attractiveness of a property. In fact, I’ve had purchasers who have got in touch and that’s been one of their first questions.
‘So for estate agents, broadband speed can be the difference between having a viewing and not having a viewing. What’s more, we now have a screen grab of the download and upload speed of broadband available printed in the details.
‘An innovation like this is about re-booting the community.’
Michael Bedford, from Bedfords, said: ‘Beautiful rural surroundings can have a downside in that they are sometimes located in areas with poor broadband coverage. In our experience, it’s certainly something which has put potential buyers off in the past.
‘So something like this makes a real difference as far as desirability is concerned: buyers get the best of both worlds – all the attractions of village life, with the broadband speed of a town.’
How does the Bootstrap Broadband network work?
Bootstrap Broadband is a fast broadband connection hub hosted at The Plough and Sail pub in Snape Maltings, Suffolk.
From there they beam the signal across the river to their main relay transmitter in the village of Snape, Suffolk.
The relay transmitter then beams the signal back across the river to Iken Cliffs and it is then distributed around Iken.
Once in Iken, the signal is beamed from house to house using point-to-point WIFI transmitters attached to the roof. The transmitters are small white boxes roughly the size of a book.
Each house joining the network also becomes a relay station.
In this way Bootstrap Broadband can pass the connection from neighbour to neighbour, and hope to get everyone online eventually.
29 out of 40 of the houses in Iken have signed up to the broadband network.
It offers packages from £25 to £45 a month for speeds of up to 25 Mbps.
Each installation costs £90 and there are no minimum contracts so users can cancel at any time.
The Wi-Fi kit is designed to operate outside in all weather conditions.
However, internet speed depends on where your house is in relation to, transmitters, how many other people are using the network at the time and the weather.
