Is there anything more irritating than a slow internet connection?

Just when you want to sit down and get on with some work the internet decides to decelerate all the way to glacier pace; downloading a picture takes an age, you may as well forget about watching a film and a Zoom meeting is a pipe dream.

Many businesses in Cumbria know the pain of a slow connection all too well, something which was a problem for many even before we moved so much of our lives online during the pandemic.

In May Openreach announced plans to connect around 100,000 more homes across the county to full-fibre broadband over the next five years.

It followed an announcement by BT that it would create 7,000 new jobs as it strives to bring full-fibre broadband to 25million homes nationwide by 2026.

Full-fibre broadband, which offers speeds of up to one gigabit per second (1000 megabits per second), is when fibre optic cables - which transport data at the speed of light - connect directly to homes and businesses.

Openreach says a total of 21 exchanges across the county are being upgraded, with the majority of homes and businesses in places such as Appleby, Carlisle, Keswick, Longtown, Shap and Whitehaven set to benefit.

However, communities and fibre providers have been taking matters into their own hands to bring gigabit connections to some of these hard-to-reach areas much sooner.

One such organisation is Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN), which began life 10 years ago as a community project spearheaded by founder Barry Forde MBE and installed its first connection to Quernmore area in Lancashire.

Over the years it has grown to employ 74 people with a network stretching from north Lancashire into many parts of south Cumbria and plans to grow much further.

B4RN, based in Melling, near Carnforth, installs new cabinets in the areas it serves which link back to the spine of the national network.

Contractors or local volunteers with the necessary skills and equipment lay the cable across land from the cabinets, but it is up to property owners to organise digging the necessary ditches and drilling a hole in their wall for the fibre to enter.

In practice people can engage contractors to do this, while local champions will often come forward who will carry out the work for their neighbours.

Chief executive Michael Lee says the key step is for rural communities to come together and invite B4RN to build a network in their area.

"The volunteers help us with the build literally end to end, so everything from the planning, to securing the wayleaves across the land, and helping advertise and leaflet and actually installing the kits in the house," he says.

"What they get back from us is we promise to connect every property in a community - not just the ones in the village centre but the one that's 600m up the hillside - with a full-fibre gigabit connection."

Households and businesses with up to five employees pay a £150 connection fee and a £30 monthly service charge, rising to £60 a month for businesses with up to 15 staff and £150 for those with over 15.

Last year OFCOM said the average internet speed in the UK hit 64 megabits per second.

Michael says that although such a connection may allow people to do things like streaming movies with ease these speeds are at the top end of what can be achieved with fibre-to-cabinet and other non full-fibre technologies.

He says full-fibre connections can “future proof” homes and businesses as the functions of the internet become more advanced and require more data usage.

B4RN’s network currently passes 17,000 properties in Lancashire and Cumbria with 8600 connected and is in the process of gaining consent to build in many more areas of central, southern and eastern Cumbria.

Under its current plans it will grow its network to pass 52,000 properties.

As a community benefit society, B4RN cannot pay a profit and has to invest any money it makes back into its communities.

For now this investment takes the form of putting money towards creating networks but in time could be used for community projects.

It is also possible for local people to invest in B4RN up to a maximum of £100,000 which is held for a minimum of three years with a five per cent return.

Anyone who invests over £1500 in a single transaction gets their £150 connection fee waived and can claim up to four waivers for every £1500 they invest, with people often choosing to gift the free connections to local organisations such as schools or churches.

Dan Robinson first became involved with B4RN in 2018 on a voluntary basis as a frustrated citizen vying to improve connectivity to his own home near Selside, north of Kendal.

"I knew that there was a fibre optic cable that ran 100 metres away from the house," he says.

"But I didn't realise I could tap into it until I spoke to B4RN. B4RN said yes, you just need to get your neighbours involved.”

Dan got his own property connected just before Christmas 2018 and has continued connecting others in the area near the rivers Mint and Sprint.

He is now putting his experience to use as a community engagement and development officer for B4RN in Cumbria.

He is currently involved in establishing networks in locations including the Duddon Valley, as well as Hawkshead, the Langdales, rural parts of Furness and the Crake Valley.

"When B4RN comes to an area we say regardless of cost, regardless of anything else, as long as we can get wayleave over the ground, we will connect 100 per cent, absolutely everybody," says Dan.

"If we've got to mole-plough through a field just to connect a single farm then we will, we'll make it happen. The key thing is to find a team of volunteers who are motivated to talk to landowners and share knowledge of what's happening and how it's happening and coordinate the process of access across the land.”

While B4RN is bringing high speed internet to people by going underground, NTC in Barrow is using hardware attached to buildings to beam it through the air.

The company has been offering the service for around a year and has, so far, a handful of customers in the area split almost equally between businesses and private residents.

NTC has a fibre optic connection to the network at College House, in Barrow, which then transmits to the receivers on users’ properties. The signal can also be bounced between the different receivers to bring more users into the network.

Arron Wakefield, who founded the company alongside Amanda McNulty and Matthew King, says it can provide speeds of up to two gigabits per second with the right hardware, although its regular service runs at about 200 megabits per second.

The business began by providing general IT and web services, but Arron says they were always experimenting with broadband provision, refining the technology before offering it commercially.

"It's a challenge for companies like us to get people aware of it and I think if people were more aware of it, especially in those areas where they're in a valley and the infrastructure isn’t in place, I think those people would be willing to help a company like us to actually get the wireless equipment to provide the connection to them,” says Arron.

"I think generally the issue that we've seen is just people being a bit sceptical about a new company and a new technology, but we definitely do want to start forming working relationships with businesses in the area.”

Arron says as well as getting a good connection, working with a smaller local supplier can also increase the speed of customer service.

"If we get a phone call from a client and they say our internet's really slow we are straight onto the system to see what's gone wrong," he says.

"We want to provide the best service that we can offer and that's one of the things I think people are missing out on.”