"I'm just a farmer's wife," says Christine Conder, modestly. But for 2,300 members of the rural communities of Lancashire she is also a revolutionary internet pioneer.
Her DIY solution to a neighbour's internet connectivity problems in 2009 has evolved into B4RN, an internet service provider offering fast one gigabit per second broadband speeds to the parishes which nestle in the picturesque Lune Valley.
.... "It wasn't rocket science. It was three days of hard work." Her motto, which she repeats often in conversation, is JFDI. Three of those letters stand for Just Do It. The fourth you can work out for yourself.
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The Farmer Who Built Her Own Broadband
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @03:48PM
Broadband costs way too much to deploy, especially in rural areas!!! I mean it costs more in urban areas because of congestion and everyone is trying to use it at once thanks to the broadband hog!! I mean it costs more in rural areas because it's harder to recoup your infrastructure costs and you also still have that one lone broadband hog!!!!
When will people stop believing this propaganda. It's getting old already.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @03:54PM
(Score: 4, Touché) by iWantToKeepAnon on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:37PM
Heh, TL;DR eh? This is a BBC article about a woman in the Lune Valley LANCASTER ENGLAND.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:44PM
Heh, TL;DR eh? This is a BBC article about a woman in the Lune Valley LANCASTER ENGLAND.
TL;DR, could you summarize that with a car analogy?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DECbot on Thursday December 29 2016, @08:06PM
Local car manufacturers paid for laws that state that all cars should place the driver on the left. The BBC wrote a story about a foreign farmer in a foreign land who built a car for foreign roads with the driver on the right and it works just as good as the left hand cars and it costs less to manufacture than what the local car manufacturers say it costs to build a car.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @08:57PM
We've had some previous related stories.
German Village Expanding Self-Built [fiber] Broadband Network [soylentnews.org]
...and, for comparison, when Wilson, NC wanted to extend their connectivity to nearby communities, the cabal of incumbent ISPs and the state legislature put the kibosh on that.
Are Peer-to-Peer Mesh Networks the Future of Internet Freedom? [soylentnews.org]
(If you don't have a bunch of peers, the answer appears to be "No".)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday December 30 2016, @07:09AM
The poster did say "huge." A TalkTalk*ndash;Comcast merger would be huge.
Of course such laws cannot be enacted in the UK, because freedom of expression is protected by Article 10 of the Human Rights Act.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/9 [legislation.gov.uk]
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday December 30 2016, @04:42PM
This is a BBC article about a woman in the Lune Valley LANCASTER ENGLAND.
No, it's in LANCASHIRE, England. Lancaster is a city, nominal capital of Lancashire which is a county. The Lune Valley is an area of Lancashire up-river from Lancaster.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anne Nonymous on Thursday December 29 2016, @04:32PM
Nowadays we refer to this as Womanband. What is this 1950?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:28PM
Some fucking feminist cunt used men's tech.
Who gives a shit.
She's opposed to men taking female children as brides. Should be removed.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:48PM
Then why don't you swim your ass all the way out there to Lune and "remove" her?
Oh, right, because you're a flabby, pasty, impotent, needle-dicked paedophile with the muscle tone of a block of tofu and half the brains. Shaddap and go back to beating off to your Cabbage Patch doll collection, you worthless oxygen thief.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Redundant) by janrinok on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:47PM
How dare you insult tofu like this! I demand that you liken the OP to something less attractive - although I will concede that tofu is intellectually superior to the OP too!
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Monday January 09 2017, @07:38AM
I contest the moderation of the above post. It is self-evident that defending the honor of tofu is a laudable task and therefore not redundant.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @03:59AM
http://www.moddb.com/games/chaosesqueanthology [moddb.com]
Lets see your project, cunt.
Also: not fat. I think you're projecting whore.
Need the thickest coke can BBC out there to fill you.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 30 2016, @05:05PM
Let me guess, you're not fat, you're fluffy? Sorry, I don't speak Hutt, you'll need to repeat some of that.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:01PM
As pointed out on the green site. This is a rehash of a story from 3 years ago.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:40PM
I would prefer the acro. J.E.D.I
As in: Just Effing Do It.
Not only can you then describe it on puritanical news sites, I find the inclusion of the vowel at position two make it feel like a real word.
Of course it is not a real word, but it could be.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday December 29 2016, @08:09PM
Disney has some lawyers that would like to send you a few fan letters. Would you be so kind to provide a mailing address?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @09:27PM
Yeah...that law does not do what you think it does.
I can say it whenever and how often I like, doubly so since I am not a US citizen.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday December 30 2016, @08:32AM
My new job requires that I spend a great deal of time Reading The Fine Manual.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Nuke on Friday December 30 2016, @04:36PM
"We dug [the cable trench] ourselves and we lit [the cable] ourselves and we proved that ordinary people could do it," she says.
Yes, because we all have a terrabit radio mast in range, don't we?
"I'm just a farmer's wife," says Christine Conder.... there are now 15 paid staff also on board.
Er .... no. That makes her "just" a ISP company director.
The bulk of the work is done by volunteers
Lucky her.
With farmers having to register online with [Defra] within five days of every calf being born ... All the farmers who haven't got broadband have to rely on land agents or auction marts or public wi-fi spaces which we haven't got round here either, or paying somebody to do it," says Chris.
Bollocks. You can register by phone or even by post [www.gov.uk]. It would not make sense to demand that rural farmers can only register on-line, on fast broadband at that. Failing that, she seems to have forgotten that virtually every public library in the UK now has connected PC's that you can use. I actually live in a remote part of Wales next to a cattle farm and the two nearest market towns (both about 10 miles away) have such libraries. I don't decry this woman's initiative, I just bridle at bull shit. In fact I welcome anything that sticks a knife in BT.