A collaboration between IT consultancy firm CGI and the Norfolk County Council (NCC) in England has leveraged a hybrid approach to help bring “ultrafast” broadband speeds to several remote industrial sites in the county, which uses a mix of wireless networking and Starlink’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.
The announcement is somewhat light on any useful technical details about the hybrid solution, which has been built in collaboration with suppliers Ingen and Onwave. But it’s said to have involved both Starlink’s global mega constellation of LEO broadband satellites and a “free-to-use public wireless service“, which suggests to us that they’re probably using Starlink for backhaul and WiFi for local distribution (likely with a premium wireless link for nearby businesses).
The NCC last year adopted a similar Starlink-based approach (LEO satellite + FWA wireless) to help bring faster broadband to a number of extremely remote rural communities (homes and businesses), which was trialled across ten village halls and nearby premises.
Councillor Jane James of NCC said:
“Digital connectivity is central to the prosperity of Norfolk as we look forward to the future, but also to the quality of life of most of our residents. CGI has partnered with us to develop a well thought out, innovative approach to ensuring improved connectivity across our county, particularly in those communities that have previously proved hard to reach.”
Ian Dunbar, Senior VP Consulting Services at CGI UK, said:
“This project supports NCC’s programme for connecting rural communities, enhancing everyday life through digital connectivity. Having fast, stable, and reliable connectivity is also necessary for NCC to deliver key critical services to rural communities and CGI’s solution also significantly benefits industries located in remote areas, from agriculture and utilities to manufacturing.”
We should point out that Starlink’s broadband service can also be purchased and installed independently by individual businesses and homes, although it’s not the cheapest of monthly rentals and we’re unsure of how the prices / performance would compare with the above hybrid approach.
Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 a month for a 30-day term, plus £299 for hardware, (one-off), on the ‘Standard’ Starlink plan, which promises internet latency times of 25-60ms, downloads of c. 25-100Mbps and uploads of c. 5-10Mbps.