Inspiring! Kilkenny's B4OC wins European Award

A rural, South Kilkenny community is officially an inspiration to all of Europe!
Piltown and Fiddown’s ‘Broadband For Our Community’ (B4OC) fibre network (internet) project has scooped a top award at the prestigious European Inspiration Awards, which took place in Belgium this last Autumn.

The only Irish candidate nominated among 111 projects from across Europe, all involved with B4OC are delighted to be presented with the Digital Futures award.
Representatives of the community and of the project’s key supporter, Kilkenny Leader Partnership (KLP) attended the ceremony.

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“Kilkenny Leader Partnership are delighted at the well-deserved success of Piltown-Fiddown’sB4OC project at the European Inspiration Awards,” said Declan Rice of KLP.
“We believe it really is an inspiration to other communities who have the same deficit of adequate broadband.”

He said he hopes the work of KLP and B4OC, meeting other communities in the coming weeks and months, will showcase the project as a springboard for those communities.
Earlier this year B4OC won the overall prize in the ‘IE Digital Town Awards’.

“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,” Mr Rice said.
B4OC have completed the first stage of their vision to install a FTTP network to service more than 700 homes and businesses in the villages that are excluded from the National Broadband Plan.
FTTP is accepted universally as the ultimate broadband solution offering the capacity for as much broadband bandwidth as needed.

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“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.”
B4OC is partnering with KLP to explain what they have done to other communities in Kilkenny who are also excluded from the NBP investment.

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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.
“We want to use the wonderful work of Piltown to inform and inspire other villages outside the NBP,” said Mr Rice. “If some of those villages want to attempt to emulate B4OC, we will try to assist them in their ambition.”