26 June

Tonight's the night.

See you at Newton Village Hall, 7.30.!! 

PLEASE come and find out more.

19 June 2009

UPDATE (from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/16/digital-britain-landline-users-broadband-tax )

Landline owners will pay £6 a year to fund the rollout of superfast broadband across the country, communications minister Lord Carter said today as he launched the government's Digital Britain report.

Unfortunately Newton, Stape & surrounding villages are unlikely to benefit from this tax in the near future...if ever!!!  So we must go it alone!!

10 June 2009

At Long Long Last!! Fibre Optic Cable for our Homes.

(Broadband, Telephone, Video Conferencing & HD Television)

(Most, but not all of this item has been printed in the June Parish Newsletter) 

As you may know, Beeline Broadband has been striving for over 5 years to bring the villages of Newton upon Rawcliffe and Stape into the digital world of 21st Century communications, otherwise known as Next Generation Access or NGA.

We now have a usable (most of the time!) wireless broadband connection with a variable speed of approximately half a megabit per second with 25 homes connected. However, due to the increasing demands on the service, we really need to be able to provide more bandwidth capacity for everyone.

At last, there is light at the end of the tunnel thanks to a Community Interest Company (CIC) with which Beeline Broadband is affiliated.

They are called NextGenUs and are working with North Yorks Network (NYNET) to deliver NGA into locations across North Yorkshire including Newton on Rawcliffe and Stape, followed asap by Lockton, Levisham, Goathland and Grosmont. North Yorkshire County Council has set up and controls NYNET, whose purpose is to provide NGA super fast broadband for the Public Sector businesses, home users and the wider community across the county of North Yorkshire.

Beyond better broadband speeds, the means of future-proof connectivity will be provided via NextGenUs Fibre & Wireless (FiWi) – using a combination of running a thin fixed-access fibre optic cable to each participating house and by using mutually complimentary advanced wireless (eg. WiMAX) technology that is ideally suited to mobility around the local area for residents and visitors alike.

This Fibrevolutionary service will be priced as inexpensively as possible during the one-time community-wide installation phase, so it is strongly recommended that if you are at all interested, NOW is the time to have it done. Future installations, as one-off activities, are likely to be a lot more expensive.

Of course another factor to consider is that it will make your property even more attractive to potential purchasers in the future since it will be possible to work from home using the internet and videoconferencing etc. This applies equally to holiday-let properties which will be more attractive to potential guests who want to stay in touch. (Yes, there ARE some people who are workaholics!!)

The BBC are working on two documentaries on projects such as ours and we believe that this is a great opportunity for our villages, so we need to make quick decisions as to whether or not we want to be involved. The timeframe is tight - the BBC are looking to do initial filming asap apparently! This means the work will have to be started soon. To summarise, we need at least 50% of each village to take up a Fibre to the Home (FttH) NGA connection in order to make it viable to start offering the service, so that we can all begin benefiting this year 2009.

The service will eventually offer a triple-play selection of HDTV, voice calls and ultrafast symmetric broadband, all delivered by NextGenUs FiWi and locally supported by BeeLine Broadband Ltd.

We don’t have set-in-stone costings and subscription charges yet, but we are assured it will be very competitive and the service will be as good as, and probably better than Virgin Cable and BT in the big cities!!!.

The method of transmission to our villages is unique and confidential until the project actually gets started, so we cannot tell you any more about that for now. Sorry!

So it would be much appreciated if you would let us know whether or not you wish to register a non-binding interest* in this high speed digital connection.

In the event of a delay to the project, plan B is to provide a quick win solution so we are working with NextGenUs to boost the connection speed that links our local community to the outside global internet – this will enable Beeline Broadband Ltd to improve the existing service and offer a better connection to more people in the local area. More information on the project will be  posted here on our website www.beelinebroadband.net as progress is made, so please check regularly.

If our cable sponsor is not convinced that we want this, there is a danger that we might lose it and that is at least £25000.00 worth of resources gone from our community forever.

Please feel free to pass this information to any neighbour in any of our local villages that you think may be interested especially those outside Newton and Stape

*You may register your non-binding interest asap by emailing This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ( or copy and paste that address into your web based mail sever)

STOP PRESS!! All local residents are invited to an open meeting at Newton on Rawcliffe Village Hall on Wed 24th June 2009 to see a presentation on this topic and to ask any questions you may have. We hope to see you there!!!

EVERY VOTE COUNTS!!!!

The maximum Hall capacity is 75 people, so come early to get your seat!!!