This project was a personal one for me and is a project I’ve been working on for the last few weeks for my grandparents. My grandmother was diagnosed in the last year with dementia, and it was important to the both of them to remain as self-sufficient as possible in their own home to minimise disruption. After some thought, it was decided that getting them access to Apple’s FaceTime service would be a great help to retain familiarity in her mind. As well as both being able to easily keep in regular contact with all members of the family around the world.

The only problem was that they live in the middle of nowhere in the Lake District and their current broadband connection (0.8meg) wasn’t up to the task. I contacted a major provider and was quoted an eye watering £13k for fibre to the home. Luckily I found a local wireless service provider that could provide a high speed wireless service for a lot less. We immediately proceeded, and they were able to get the service provisioned in less than a week.

The build involved installing a discrete air fibre antenna on a tree on their land pointed at a relay station several kilometres away. Then 350 m of power and fibre was laid from the antenna through the wood to a termination point in their garage. Lastly, cat5e was run from there to their living room where a wireless access point was set up.

The iPad was set up with various accessibility options such as larger text and buttons. Then all the contacts they needed were added along with news and weather apps before spending some time showing them how to make video calls and using the other features.

I’m happy to report that they absolutely love it and it was a resounding success. With speeds of up to 50mbps and low latency, it even works brilliantly in adverse weather conditions that are the norm in the Lakes.

The cost of the build including iPad came in under £1800 (the majority of which was the fibre cable and specialist hardware).

This project means so much to me and I’m really proud of how it has panned out. It’s a really simple and effective way to keep in touch with family members. Whilst this was a very specific case with a significant build aspect to it due to the lack of ordinary fibre infrastructure in their area, it’s an example of what can be done with the right contacts and resources.

These are things that we can take care of for you. If this is something that would also appeal to you then please get in touch and I can happily help you out.