INCA Conference - 16th November 2017

1. The B4RN Project
Barry Forde MBE - CEO
www.b4rn.org.uk

2. Model
• Commercial or community
• Don’t try and mix the two, it doesn’t work!
• B4RN is a Not for Profit, Community Benefit Society
• Vital to make clear no one making any money
• Allows community to fully buy into project
• Strong support for community in rural areas
• Recognition that we cannot rely on government to do it all
• If you want to live somewhere really really nice there are costs
• No public transport, no gas, septic tanks, bore holes, rubbish
broadband

3. Funding
• Primarily via shares bought by members of community
• Shares are EIS compatible so 30% tax rebate for eligible investors
• Three year lock in for EIS compliance, no interest during that
• Annual interest from year 4
• Currently 5% but variable
• £4.5M raised so far
• Each new parish needs to put up the full CAPEX of their build
• We get three years interest free loan to do build in
• Also we control the rate of withdrawal of shares
• Currently we allow for 10% of shares in issue to be withdrawn annually
• But in practice withdrawals a small proportion of this
• The investment is sticky because returns are good and the cause is just
and people want to support their community.

4. Build
• 100% of properties in parish included in design/costs
• Community project so no one too far away or too expensive
• Longest dig 5.3Km for single farm up the side of a mountain, no electric, water etc but 1Gbs
broadband!
• PtP dual fibre from head end to property
• 1Gbs download and upload, no usage caps
• One month contracts
• We don’t need to lock customers in, our service is second to none so no one wants to leave. Zero
churn rate.
• High resilience core with dual diverse routes to each parish cabinet.
• Backbone uses leased dark fibre from Zayo
• Manchester-Edinburgh, 480Km, 40 wavelengths of 10Gbs
• 7 Switching nodes along route with 64x10GbE port switches in each one
• 160Gbs capacity from each to Edinburgh and Manchester
• Each parish node gets 2x10GbE paths to two switching nodes per 200 properties
• At Manchester and Edinburgh peer with IX-Manchester and IX-Scotland and have
10Gbs IP transit ports (Cogent/HE) and 10Gbs links to London LINX
• Any core fibre failure invisible to users, ditto switch centre failures
• B4RN is built for quality NOT cheapness

5. Project methodology
• B4RN does not have any plans to go anywhere.
• We respond to requests from communities to help them sort out their broadband
problems
• If a community approaches us we explain how B4RN works and make it clear they have
to raise 100% of their CAPEX and also do an awful lot of work themselves.
• They hold local public meeting and explain this and if there is clearly enough support we
do a detailed design.
• They then need to identify all landowners and get permission to lay duct across their
land without payment of any sort.
• If possible we get landowners to do the digging and accept shares or cash payment for
the work at the rate of £1.50/metre
• Alternatively we use our panel of contractors who will mole plough or open trench for us
at the same £1.50/m rate
• Local volunteers will help with the manual work involved in prepping for digs and
reinstatement afterwards. They do this for free to support their community.

6. Summary
• Have either finished or have civils underway in 75 parishes
• Many more waiting in the wings once we have time and resources
• Also holding back to see how USO plays out. If badly then we will retrench within our current
boundaries
• Coverage area is now about 2,000Km2 (roughly area inside M25 motorway)
• Build costs average about £700/property
• 3,800 properties live on network
• Adding 150/month and will hit 4500 by financial year end
• Could lift this to 300/month next year depending on how things like USO play out
• Now at 24 staff and climbing
• Raised ~£4.5M via shares and £2.5M via loans from community members
• No problem raising investment from community
• 2017/2018 will be first year we are cash flow positive
• From 2018-2019 we expect to start returning cash to the community as well as repaying investors
and loans.