Service update

Our third feed - our third line - is now installed but hasn't been working well. The latest theory is that it needs a static IP address - like our other two lines - to function well with out equipment. This morning that IP address was allocated by BT - and hopefully later today we'll be cooking on broadband gas....

Saturday 14th August

We're not sure why the system went down on Saturday - no obvious reasons. The best guess is that a piece of equipment at Leintwardine is malfunctioning. Rob, our engineer, is going to have a word with the manufacturer tomorrow. Meantime, I've given the nasty electric demon the equivalent of a good kicking, and its sprung into life again.

Advance warning: there may be a small disruption to service on Wednesday morning, when engineers from BT are fiddling with some of our wires. This is the final phase of the enhancement which, had it not been for our electrical nightmares in April and May, would have been completed long ago. I promise you'll all notice the benefits....

I've tried to return all the calls about Saturday's problem - could you remember to leave your number when you call? Hunting around for numbers slows me down - and occasionally stops me dead in my tracks.

Apologies and thanks for your forebearance

Wobbles

We've all noticed a tendency in the system to wobble: sometimes its very wobbly, and makes a connection impossible.

Rob, our engineer, is in Sri Lanka - and when he comes back in August he'll take a close look at what's wrong - but as a temporary measure he's adjusted the frequency of transmission between the Lingen transmitter that, ultimately, handles everyone's traffic, and Leintwardine, where our signal goes into the internet. We have now an increase in signal level and it seems to be improving the service.

I'll keep you all posted.

Capacity goes up....

I'm delighted to say that today's effort to double our network capacity was successful: we now have twice as much bandwidth. Hopefully this will improve everyone's upload and download speeds.

We'll be adding another 50 per cent extra capacity later this month - meaning even faster broadband.

Apologies its taken so long.

Electricity supply

As users will not need reminding, we've been having some - how to describe it? - "issues" with our electricity supply.

Today from about 3.15pm the service went down whilst a brand new electricity supply was hard wired into our equipment. This ought to put a stop to the problem, once and for all.

Many many thanks to Lloyds of Ludlow Ltd, our landlords, for their enormous effort to help resolve this problem, and to Paul at PBJA Electrical Contractors for stepping in to help us out, despite being in the midst of packing for his holiday flight.

The internet connection is planned to resume by 5pm. Next Wednesday. 7th July, has been pencilled-in for the first stage of the service enhancement.

The service is getting better....

A quick note to let you know that the first stage of our service enhancement will be in operation from early July.

We'll be installing an expensive piece of new eqiupment with the result that we can double the bandwidth available to the network. This should help ease the (sometimes horrifically) low upload speeds experienced by some users, and the wobbly on-off experience of others.

During July we will expand our bandwidth by a further 50 per cent.

The result of this substantial investment will be - we hope - a vastly improved service.

Expanding the service...

We've had some problems with BT - whose website said they offered line bonding, but whose call centre insists they don't - and from the suppliers of the Netgear equipment we need to install to manage network resources. But when that is resolved - a fortnight - we'll be able to improve everyone's upload speed, and add 10-15 new users. I'll keep this site updated - and will be writing to the new users.