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.

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.

Are you using a wireless router at home?

A word of help for those of our users who have wireless routers in their houses.

As you know, our service is delivered through a customer unit fixed (usually) to the eves of your houses. The signal comes in and via ethernet is plugged into your computer. Several users plug the connection into their own wireless router instead.

Please bear in mind that if your internet service drops out, or becomes wobbly, the first thing to do is RESTART YOUR WIRELESS ROUTER. This is almost certainly the cause of the problem (rather than a problem with Lingen Broadband...). If that doesn't work then re-start the Lingen Broadband customer unit AND THEN restart your wireless router, too.

If that doesn't work then please try connecting our service directly into your computer. If you still can't connect to the internet then its definitely our problem - in which case give us a call immediately. When you call please leave your name and number clearly - it will speed things up.

Engineering and service improvements

As you'll remember, our initial aim was to get us all safely beyond the 1st April cut off point: that involved creating a kind of broadband lifeboat and hurling us all into it. Not surprisingly the lifeboat is struggling to keep above water under the weight of 36 of us.

To continue the metaphor, what we're doing today is helping to build the big spacious ocean-going cruiser into which we will all climb (elegantly) later this month.

In less flowery language all this means that today the telecoms which double our bandwidth - to 16mb - were installed. Within a fortnight we will be able to complete the expansion process which will mean a much smoother service for everyone. Not least, it will ease congestion.

If we add a third line - and its being considered - users will find the service truly electric.

The bad news is that today we had some service interruptions whilst our engineers were at work - and more can be expected on or around 20th, when various bits of equipment will be replaced and the new upgraded service come into operation.

Please bear with us: you'd be astonished how complicated all this is to organise. We'll keep disruption to a minimum.

Upload speeds

We think something may be a little awry with our uploading capacity: upload speed ought to be 256kbps, but tests on some occasions are showing speeds from 50-90kpbs. The answer may simply be to try again later: if too many of us are uploading simultaneously then inevitably there will be problems. The alternative possibility is that somehow our telecoms or our network control equipment is not working correctly - and we are investigating these possibilities.

Last Friday some of our equipment was replaced in the hope this would iron out some wrinkles in the system. We will keep you posted.

Making the service more reliable

As users will know, we've had some glitches thanks to the unhappy arrangements at our network hub in Leintwardine. We're taking urgent steps to put those right and this includes arranging for Central Networks to install our own, separate, metered electricity supply. It's another cost we'd not bargained for - there seem to be quite a few of them - but once it's done we'll have removed one big chunk of uncertainty and unreliability. We're hopeful this will be completed before 1st May.

Our first glitch

Having completed all the complicated stuff it was inevitable, really, that something fiddly should trip us up: we thought at first that some of the customer data on the network management device was input incorrectly - or a line of software code had got garbled - but we now think it was simply that the customer units on some of the houses hadn't quite digested the software update they were all given earlier in the week. The customer units were (remotely) given a second dose, and now all seem to be working. A big thank-you to Rob, who lost his Bank Holiday Friday morning whilst putting our network to rights.

Success!

6.25 pm, and the service is working. And I'm getting a nice strong signal and excellent bandwidth.

....and now we wait

The service is now down. We're awaiting the delivery this morning of the two pieces of hardware - a router and a network manager - that connected into the system at our Leintwardine hub. Once they're here our engineer, Rob, will perform his magic tricks. Then we wait for our ADSL connections to go live. That could be in a few minutes, a few hours, or not until 10pm-ish tonight. Anxiety levels are high... fingers crossed.

Handover Timetable

LINGEN COMMUNITY BROADBAND

As we prepare to transfer the service from AccessBroadband/QiComm to us there will be some interruptions to the service. It's impossible to be precise - to a large extent this is out of both our hands and QiComm's - but it looks like:

* From 5pm (1700hrs) today the service will begin to go down - some users will loose their service first, others will follow. This is to allow for technical updates and changes

* by midnight tonight the service will be entirely down

* sometime on Thursday - could be as late as 8pm, could be as early as mid-afternoon - the service will revive, this time under Lingen Community Broadband colours.

* during much of April we may find the service a little gummy whilst we expand our bandwidth. We simply didn't have time before the 1st April deadline to install all the bandwidth we need - so please bear with us - the end result will be worth it.

Signed and sealed - legal paperwork completed

With just three days to go until we take responsibility for the service we've finally completed and signed the hefty load of legal paperwork we needed.

This includes

* transfering assets and equipment from QiComm Ltd to Lingen Community Broadband CIC

* agreeing arrangements with QiComm for the transfer of service responsibilities

* agreeing new licenses with the landlords of our transmitter sites

In all it amounts to nine separate legal agreements.

This morning the final piece of paper got the final signature - and so everything becomes ours on Thursday morning.

The transfer of the service will happen later that day.

Users - Urgent Information

EXISTING USERS PLEASE NOTE:

Please leave your customer units (the boxes attached to the house) powered from now until at least 2nd April: keep it plugged in and switched on. Our engineer will be remotely updating its software ready for the transfer – and the transfer itself on 1st April requires the unit to be powered. If the unit is not left powered and plugged into the mains, your broadband service will not operate after 1st April.