Piltown’s ‘Digital Lighthouse’ broadband project nominated for EU award

Piltown and Fiddown’s national award winning ‘Broadband For Our Community’ (B4OC) fibre network has now been nominated as the only Irish candidate for a prestigious European Award to be decided early next month.

The European Network for Rural Development (ENRD) ‘Rural Inspiration Awards’ has selected the community run project to give the twin villages of south Kilkenny, which are not included in the National Broadband Plan (NBP), their own future proofed ‘fibre to the premises’ (FTTP) network.

Piltown and Fiddown’s B4OC are the sole representative of Ireland among 111 other nominees for the awards with the winner to be announced in Brussels on October 6.

Representatives of the community and of the project’s key supporter, Kilkenny LEADER Partnership (KLP) will attend the ceremony. Declan Rice of KLP urged other communities of Kilkenny to participate in the public vote on the ENRD website.

“It’s a great honour for Piltown, and for Kilkenny, to see such an innovative and ambitious project go from winning the national award to being nominated for the EU accolade. It obviously doesn’t happen very often, and we hope people across the county will take the opportunity to vote online for Piltown,” said Mr Rice.

Earlier this year the community company won the overall prize in the ‘IE Digital Town Awards’. B4OC have completed the first stage of their vision to install a FTTP network to service over 700 homes and businesses in the villages that are excluded from the NBP.

FTTP is accepted universally as the ultimate broadband solution offering the capacity for as much broadband bandwidth as needed.

“We installed fibre in our first node — or section of 70 premises — earlier this year and plugged it in to the internet to give those homes speeds of over a gigabyte,” said project manager Jim O’Brien.

“We now plan to complete the installation in rest of the village’s stages before the end of next year.”

Brian Doyle, the Chairperson of B4OC explains: “One of the government’s National Digital Strategy core objectives is to have 100% of households connected to a gigabit network by 2028. The National Broadband Plan (NBP) covers 22% of this and the remaining 78% is meant to be covered by commercial operators. When the NBP finishes in 2026 there will be many houses in small towns and villages not fully connected to a gigabit network (50% in our case).

“We believe that we are not the only town or village that sees this as a problem. It is our view that the community-based model that we have implemented could help some way towards meeting the ambitious goals set out in the National Digital Strategy.”

A key benefit of owning and operating their own broadband network is that the community of Piltown and Fiddown can set the price of the service at a reasonable level and retain and invest any profits into other community projects.
B4OC is partnering with KLP to explain what they have done to other communities in Kilkenny who are also excluded from the NBP investment.

Callan-based community consultancy: Workhouse Union is retained to work with the partners to organise a series of local workshops in October to explain the development process, which will be followed by a day-long seminar in Piltown in November.

This, the partners hope, will allow those other excluded communities to learn about the pragmatics of the network planning, financing and installation.

“We want to use the wonderful work of Piltown to inform and inspire other villages outside the NBP,” says Declan Rice.

“ If some of those villages want to attempt to emulate B4OC, we will try to assist them in their ambition.”

In June, the chairperson of the IE Digital Town Awards judging panel Joan Mulvihill, praised Piltown’s win.

“The community of Piltown showed extraordinary resolve and determination in putting their town on the digital map,” she said.

“The support from businesses and landowners in granting access to land, those who prepared the ground and laid the cables,  every aspect of this entry is commendable. In recognising Piltown with this award we are confident that this is just the start for them with great things to come. This is truly a lighthouse digital town.”

As Piltown and Fiddown’s continues the journey in both its own community, and elsewhere in Kilkenny as local champion and mentor, it is good to know that the ‘lighthouse digital town’ is being recognised at the highest level. To vote, the ENRD website is enrd.ec.europa.eu and search for the Rural Inspiration awards.