June 4, 2025 • 33 mins
We dive into the practical world of internet connectivity for village halls, exploring everything from 4G to Starlink, fiber to copper, sharing real-world experiences to help you make the best choice for your community space.
• Internet is now classified as a human right, yet many rural communities still struggle with speeds below 0.5 Mbps
• Community-led solutions like Hebnet CIC have successfully provided internet coverage across 600 square miles of Scotland's Highlands and Islands
• Starlink offers viable speeds but at a significant cost (approximately £75/month), making it suitable only where no alternatives exist
• 4G can provide excellent performance in low-population areas but may struggle during peak usage periods
• Village halls should aim for minimum 50 Mbps connections when planning to stream live events
• Hardwired access points are superior to mesh networks for reliable coverage throughout larger buildings
• Multiple WiFi networks from a single access point can separate secure payment systems from general public use
• Outdated routers can significantly limit connection speed regardless of your internet package
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Marc Smith (00:01):
Hi, I'm Marc Smith and welcome to the Village Halls
podcast, sponsored by AlliedWestminster, the UK's largest
specialist provider of VillageHall insurance, and the home of
Village Guard.
Before we begin, a quickreminder that entries are now
open for the Village HallsInspiration Awards 2025,
celebrating the incredible workhappening in village, community
(00:24):
and church halls across thecountry.
You can apply between the 1stof May and the 30th of September
, so do consider putting yourhall forward.
Welcome to the Village Hallspodcast.
In this episode, we're going todive into the world of internet
connectivity for Village Halls.
If you've heard me talk aboutmy fibre work in the community,
(00:45):
you might think we're justrepeating ourselves, but this
time it's a little bit different, because today we're focusing
on the practicalities.
So what internet options areactually available for village
halls and, crucially, how youcan get your hall connected?
So, from 4G to Starlink andexisting fibre to copper, we
will break down the pros andcons and share real-world
experiences to help you make thebest choice.
(01:07):
So, to complement this episode,I'm also putting together a
handy how-to guide for ourwebsite, inspired by what I'll
be doing right after editingthis podcast heading down to my
own village hall to set up theirWi-Fi.
I'll be tackling those deadzones and making sure everyone
can get connected.
So I should mention too thatwe're not just talking in theory
here.
Our work with Hebnet, cic andother local initiatives has
(01:30):
covered a staggering 600 squaremiles of the Highlands and
Islands, so we know a thing ortwo about finding solutions that
really work for ruralcommunities.
Joining me for this conversationis Ian Bolas, co-director of
Hebnet CIC.
Ian's knowledge of ruralinternet options far surpasses
anyone else I know, making himthe perfect guest for this
episode.
So let's get into it.
(01:51):
Welcome to the podcast, ian.
Thanks for having me, Marc, noworries.
Well, I think it's best to beup front as well.
We are actually co-directorstwo of four of the CIC Hebnet,
two or four of the CIC Hebnetand we provide, I suppose, the
(02:12):
internet to quite a large areaup here in the west coast of
Scotland.
But I came in quite late toHebnet because you were using
the village I live in as a kindof hop to another island.
So be really good if you cantell us a little bit why, like
when Hebnet was created and whyit was created.
Ian Bolas (02:26):
Right, yeah, so Hebnet was created in I think it
was 2011,.
The actual business was formed,I think we trialled stuff in
2010.
And it was basically becausethe small aisles where we
started there was just nointernet really for anyone there
(02:47):
other than satellite, and thesatellite available at the time
was affected by the weather,expensive and it was kind of
probably not dissimilar todial-up in terms of performance.
That in terms of performance,uh.
So some residents on egg, oneof the other directors of
(03:08):
headnet, simon hellowell he, hewas dealing with edinburgh
university and I was uh lookingto buy a house on rum and to
kind of cut a long story short,we did some trials with some
five gigahertz lightly licensedhardware and the kind of general
principle that if we could takean internet connection from the
mainland and send it wirelesslyacross the islands, it would
(03:31):
give us a better service than wecould from us.
We could get from the satelliteservices and I suppose our
destiny was a bit more in ourown hands.
If we did that, if we gotpeople to sign up to it, we
could maybe get more bandwidthand things like that.
So, as you mentioned it, oncewe got going with things we had
(03:56):
to go to Elgol to get to Canna,which is the most westerly point
of the headnet, and so, yeah,we just used Elg a as a bounce
between rum and canna.
Uh and uh.
Obviously then later on, whenalgol kind of came on board
that's when you came on as well,and yeah, you know, we expanded
(04:18):
uh to include algol in our, inour networks, like I suppose, as
you know, although algol's partof sky, it's quite kind of
quite isolated other than theroad coming down.
So you'll, you'll suffer from,uh, the same issues in some
respects as we do on the islandsunreliable power, poor internet
(04:38):
, things like that.
So some of these things youjust have to kind of go off and
fix yourself, if you can to someextent yeah, well, I know the
bt is still, it still has apresence here in algo, but it's
zero.
Marc Smith (04:49):
It's still 0.47 uh meg download speed, so it's
still shockingly poor.
So I suppose if headnet,headnet had not come along,
that's although we have otheroptions now.
Uh, on the last maybe two yearsit's been a massive issue uh,
throughout covid and yeah reallyshone up.
How, how, how, how much.
You need a reliable internetconnection because covid was
(05:11):
everyone working from home inthis area where there was no.
You know, there's no optionsfor for internet besides what we
were doing.
Ian Bolas (05:18):
Yeah I think it's a good point with with the whole
covid thing like 2020, 2021,where everyone was working from
home or couldn't leave the houseor whatever, and the importance
of the internet went in ruralareas.
It went from being kind of, Isuppose, a nice to have and
(05:39):
might support your business toan essential, with everyone
doing Zoom calls, keeping intouch with family, or WhatsApp
calls, whatever.
And the thing that still getsme now is we set up Hebnet in
2011 with a view it was going tobe medium-term option until you
know, fibre or whatever gotdone by BT, scottish government,
(06:01):
uk government or whoever.
And, as you mentioned, 2025 now, and the broadband speed
offered in algol in 2011 was0.47 and 14 years later it's
it's improved to a 0.47, whichis nothing.
Yeah, and the small aislesannoyed are uh, there is no
(06:22):
option with bt.
Uh, for any service through thecopper telephone lines here.
Yeah, and like, as you mentioned, the only real change is
starlink, uh, as one of theoptions and other than kind of,
I would say, speed wise it's.
It's probably comparable toheadnet.
When you average out yourupload and your download and and
(06:44):
download and heavy usage, peakperiods and things like that.
The main difference between thetwo products is the cost.
I would say that's the maindifference there.
But it's just crazy that in 14years there has been zero
progress outside of Hebnet inthis area.
Marc Smith (07:03):
Yeah, it's pretty, um, depressing really, because I
remember when I moved here in2011, everyone in the village
was oh yeah, btr coming nextyear, coming next year because I
I relied on it a lot because ofthe, the video work I was doing
so like when you've got 0.47 inthe dangle the carrot, it never
, ever came.
So I again went to satellite,which is the old two-way system
(07:24):
yeah and you're limited to Idon't know a certain speed, but
I suppose, thankfully, now we'vegot there's a lot more options.
But as you're saying that itwas simon um on that l of egg,
so he was working with was heworking with edinburgh uni for
something?
Ian Bolas (07:38):
and that's how we got in touch with yeah, so yeah, so
it was uh a guy called peterbuneman, a professor at
edinburgh, and he he was uh in adepartment that was kind of
always looking at ways toimprove like rural, rural
settings of internet or whatever, and he he's from loch horn so
he set the stuff up thereoriginally and simon basically
(08:02):
got in contact with him aboutcould we do something similar
for egg, and that just we we wegot equipment off them some of
your ubiquity equipment, I thinkjust loaned it to proof of
concept, yeah that you couldsend a signal from aris egg or
mal egg on the mainland to eggand then distribute it.
Marc Smith (08:19):
That was how many miles, is that?
Ian Bolas (08:22):
So Egg is roughly 15 miles from Mallaig.
Marc Smith (08:27):
All right right.
Ian Bolas (08:28):
As does the Crow Flies, yeah, yeah, and Rum's
about 16 to 17 miles as the CrowFlies, yeah, and that's how
Simon kind of got the initialsetup.
And when Simon set it up, Ithink he had 10 houses in
cleardale, which is the with afair sorry, wasn't clear, that
was in garmasdale.
(08:48):
Uh, he had, I know, 10 housesor something like five, 10
houses there.
I think they were paying sevenpound fifty each just to cover
the cost of like electric andall right, a few other things.
And that's how the initial Isuppose, proof of concept right
there happening isn't it.
But I think it's when we talkabout back at 2011,.
(09:12):
I remember coming to RUM andyou click a YouTube video, go
and make a cup of tea.
By the time you'd done that,you'd hoped it had loaded.
By the time you'd done that,you'd hoped it had loaded.
And one of the biggest I'd sayone of the biggest things I
always found would come into thesmall aisles, or, yeah, I'd say
(09:32):
the small aisles was thatpeople's use of the internet was
different to the mainland, whenI don't think it should be
different, because you know wehave electric on the small isles
.
You know each island's got itsown grid.
You know, with renewables andthings like that, and although
(09:53):
we're not allowed to use as muchelectric as other houses, you
can still use TVs, washingmachines, all these you know, I
suppose, things that you'dexpect to be able to use on the
mainland.
Yeah, the only things we don'thave an electric side are like
showers and cookers, but you,you know there's alternatives
for that.
(10:13):
You know it's not like you.
Just you know you can't have acooker, it's just a gas cooker,
whereas with the internet it wasa like, because the internet
was so poor here, especially foryoungsters or people wanting to
work from home.
You couldn't have.
Facebook wasn't a thing forpeople because it was just too
(10:35):
slow YouTube was not reallybeing experienced properly by
people.
So things like that, where therewas a clear disadvantage to
living on an island there interms of you didn't get the same
quality of service for yourinternet yeah, yeah, whereas you
still had.
Your electric was normal, youknow, your normal water, you
know, uh, there was no, no realhardships for your electric and
(10:58):
water.
I think the internet's classedas a human right now, I think uh
yeah and and like electric andwater are.
So what should the internet be?
Suched as a human right now?
I think, uh, yeah, and and likeelectrical water are.
So why should the internet besuch, you know, so far behind
the mainland and it puts you ata disadvantage.
You know, uh, and I would.
I would say I've certainly seen, since we started hebnet and we
you know, we've got fiber insome places and and things that
(11:23):
Obviously the internet now isused.
People have smartphones here,people have point-of-sale
devices.
They'll have them in Elgo, youknow, at the like Bella Jane, or
your the Misty.
Marc Smith (11:38):
Isle.
Ian Bolas (11:38):
Misty Isle, places like that and everywhere.
No one carries cash anymore onthe islands it's all cards you
know yeah yeah, or it's apayment on your smartphone.
So all of these things nowwithout a reliable internet
connection, uh, you know, itjust wouldn't work for people,
(11:59):
uh and it would it would justaffect how these islands have an
opportunity to develop.
The same with algol as well, andnoida, that without a half
decent connection just peoplecan't kind of move there.
Uh, and I know starlinkobviously is kind of like, I
suppose, our main competitor anduh, as an option, but like for
(12:19):
the likes of, say, misty isle,for example, you know, do they
want to be paying 75 pounds amonth 12 months of the year?
Yeah, yeah, you know it's a bigexpense uh for people and they
don't really, they don't reallyneed, they just need a
connection that we don't need100 meg connection or 200 meg,
(12:40):
yeah, yeah, uh, and even if theywould manage to get a bt
connection at your 0.47 meg, uh,it's still uh, 30 quid a month,
40 quid a month, you know.
Marc Smith (12:50):
So yes the thing.
Yeah, because bt don't chargebased on speed, it's just the
service as long as you can tickthe box with the service, but
even that's it like that'syou're still getting 30 pound a
month.
Ian Bolas (12:59):
That's it.
So it's, it's, it's things likethat.
And and I know elg is probablya bit different from the small
aisles the average salary in thesmall aisles is just people
can't afford to spend £700 or£800 a year on their internet.
Marc Smith (13:14):
Yeah.
Ian Bolas (13:16):
So there's quite a few factors in that we've been
able to support a bit of growthby doing this project or
business model as well which hasbeen quite good yeah.
Marc Smith (13:34):
So I suppose we're talking about starlink there.
So if we can run over some ofthe options for village halls,
so I think the only time thatstarlink would even enter into
it, if there's nothing, you knowyou've literally got nothing,
and and I would consider bt'shalf a meg nothing, because it
would be unbeatable, you knowunbeatable and it would.
It wouldn't open up anyopportunities for businesses.
(13:54):
So I think the only chance, theonly reason you would need to
have starlink would be if therewas literally nothing.
So no bt presence, no 4g, whichis amazingly still a few places
in the country with no 4g um.
I think that would be the only,only the only reason um to have
starlink, because I get calledup quite a lot through my it it
(14:16):
business about starlink and halfthe time I just say go outside,
get your phone out and do aquick speed check on your phone
using the 4g.
And they've got the 4gavailable as well and the 4g
speeds I have, you know well,you know torrent, which is only,
you know, 10 miles from me.
I got a speed check of 240 megthere last week when I was
checking someone's connection.
(14:37):
So that's a good um, goodalternative if bt are not there,
but see you in terms of whatyou know about 4g.
What are the kind of?
There's limitations with 4g aswell?
What would you say if?
If there was 4g, if that wasthe only option for village
halls, what would be thelimitations to consider for for
that?
Ian Bolas (14:56):
yeah, I suppose it's tricky with 4g, like you, you
you've got some good speedsthere in kind of taurine and and
where you've been past, andit's, I think, the lack of
people, it's purely it's purelylack of people because those
cell sites have, say, one gigcapacity.
If you were to have a, avillage hall in a in a small
(15:20):
town, uh, or small village even,depending where the cell site
is and the distance, the 4gmight not be so good at all.
Uh, and it's purely kind ofbased on what other users are on
on the cell at the time.
I know if you were to go offonto the mainland, you know, to
(15:41):
fort william or inverness, likeI know, if you've got 5g, it's
different but I would.
I would be surprised if you'vegot 4g performance like you get
in torrent.
Uh, yeah, definitely, andbecause it could purely be
because you've got 500 devicesconnected in a cell near
Inverness, say.
The reality is Torin's probablygot less than 50 devices
(16:04):
connected to it.
Marc Smith (16:05):
Yeah, I know that when I went to see a rugby game
in Murrayfield they were not asingle bit.
It was full 4G, 4 bars on thephone but not a single bit of
data could transfer.
That's yeah.
Because of the volume of peoplethat were on that, yeah, that
mass site that's one thing.
Ian Bolas (16:23):
It goes to show where , uh, the certainly stadiums
where I've been in, stadiumswhere you've had a sporting
event, things like that, and youmight try and send a picture of
, like the winning try or thatkind of thing, yeah.
And or new year's eve isanother good example of where if
, yeah, you know if you're at aconcert or a stadium, uh, yeah,
(16:46):
the 4g can't hack it that's agood point.
Marc Smith (16:49):
I still get the odd text about an hour before
midnight in new year to saybecause I can't contact you
later on.
A happy new year now, andthat's still a thing, isn't it
really?
Ian Bolas (16:58):
yeah, and that's it and all, I suppose all of these
internet services, they all,they're all based on contention
ratios, uh and uh.
Depending on the provider, youmight work on a content.
You know like, I think bt usedto go on a 50 to 1 contention on
their back, I think if youordered a business product, it
(17:20):
was 40 to 1 or 25 to 1.
But it was effectively if youordered, say, a 2 meg product
and this is a long time ago now,I think the way it worked was
that BT in their data centerwould go on the assumption that
2 meg would be enough for 50users, because when you put the
(17:42):
two meg into, say, 50, lots oftwo meg, you'd have 100 meg and
not everyone would be using itat the same time, et cetera, so
you'd have less people competingfor that kind of bit of
bandwidth.
Marc Smith (17:56):
Yeah, yeah.
Ian Bolas (17:57):
And if you're buying a business project, it costs
more, but no one because you hadyou were sharing it with less
people.
Yeah, yeah, and like the onlythe only true products out there
.
Uh, your least line productsfor internet, which obviously
very expensive, but that'sone-to-one, so you have one gig
from, say, your house toEdinburgh.
Marc Smith (18:22):
Is that effectively what a business plan is?
They're always more expensive,so I assume the business plan is
more expensive, but it'sbecause you get less people
battling for that.
Ian Bolas (18:32):
There'll be reduced contention I've not looked at
the small print for yearsbecause I've not been buying
business products but it'll beless contention, I would imagine
, and they'll try and sell you abetter service.
You know where it might be acase that they'll respond to
your call quicker, things likethat.
(18:54):
The old leased line productsused to have an option I think
of like a four, eight or maybefour, eight or 12-hour response
on a leased line, but you justpay more money for it.
If you wanted a four-hour fixyou'd probably pay double or
triple the price.
Marc Smith (19:11):
What's Hibnett's response time?
Ian Bolas (19:15):
Well, this is the thing.
Well, come on to a good thingthere.
Like I know, we don't offer aresponse time as such, like
typically uh, we'll, it'll besame day.
Typically, I would say, yeah,uh and that's not just a
response.
Marc Smith (19:31):
That's more a fix, isn't it?
Yes?
Ian Bolas (19:34):
yeah, typically certainly like if you've got an
outage or a device failure,stuff like that, it'll be same
day.
And one thing with the islandsand Noida as well, and even
Helgo, I think, it's two weeksbefore you'll see a BT engineer
rock up.
And it's not to have a go at BTor BT Openreach, but that's the
(19:55):
reality of when you have a linewith a big provider go to bt or
bt open reach, but that'sthat's the reality of when you,
when you have a line with with aa big provider uh, the response
time for your standardresidential product they're
probably not going to fix itvery quickly yeah, yeah that's
just the nature of the beast, uh, and like if you, I'd imagine
if you had a fault at your cellsite in uh elgol, say, or torin,
(20:20):
you know, like your 4g, yeah,you could be talking a couple of
days potentially I know up thenorth end of sky.
Marc Smith (20:26):
They went down and it was about three days yes or
uh, yeah it was.
It was that someone was someonehas a 4g connection in their
holiday let and they actuallywent out and bought starlight
because they couldn't be doingwith the constant outages from
the 4g mast yeah, you and youget these issues.
Ian Bolas (20:42):
You know it could be that you've got power issues to
the site or radio issues or justhardware issues bad cables
whatever you know and it's itcan impact uh, you know the
response times or theavailability of a service as
well.
Marc Smith (21:02):
It's a tricky one when it comes to village halls.
What would you say?
They don't need to do a greatdeal, but what would you say?
A minimum speed they should betrying to target.
If they went outside to roughlydo a 4G speed check with
whatever SIM card they've got,what would be the minimum?
Ian Bolas (21:17):
Because some of these village halls do have like they
have like showings of like livesports or national theater I
think, I think, yeah, I thinknowadays, I think you'd be you'd
be wanting kind of like 50 meg,would be like, yeah, the
reality is you could probablystream something pretty well on
10 to 20 uh, but if I suppose,if you have like a kind of, if
(21:39):
you're averaging around the 50mark, you know there's plenty of
.
You know there's because if ifthey're streaming an event in a
hall, you can't tell everyone,don't use your phone because
it'll cause the, it'll cause therugby to buffer or whatever.
Uh, so you need you need enoughto support the other devices as
well.
But then that might be whereyou set your wireless up or your
(22:03):
network in your village hall toprioritize or have a network
that's on for the streaming andthen a separate network that's
all your clients or customers orthat side of things.
Marc Smith (22:18):
Yeah, well, that's a very good link into the Wi-Fi
inside the Holly and so thanksfor that.
So yeah, once you get, saywhatever you've got going into
the building, be it BT or 4G orStarlink, what's the best way to
distribute it around?
Because I mean, I get a lot ofpeople asking about wireless
(22:39):
meshes and I've never reallybeen a fan of wireless meshes
because of the it.
Just at least you know if it'snot wired, I always think it's
an issue.
But what's your, what's youropinion on?
If it was a village hall asksyou, what would you be?
What would you be recommendingfor them?
Ian Bolas (22:54):
yeah, it's like wireless is such a complicated I
think it's a complicated kindof discussion because, like you,
like you said that if you havea, typically if you have a wire
from between two devices, youknow that you've got x amount of
capacity between those twopoints.
(23:15):
Yeah, uh, was like wirelessmesh type system where, say,
you've got the the generaltraffic going between the meshes
to get back to, uh, your routeror your switch or whatever
you've got it.
There's a lot of factors thatcan upset that uh.
So for me, I I personally liketo have a, a cabinet where I've
(23:39):
got my internet, you know, 4gconnection coming in and then a
switch and then a cable going toeach access point is.
Or, you know each wirelessdevice is my preferred way of
doing it.
Yeah, uh, because you know eachwireless device, then all that,
all that device is doing, isclient related conversations.
It's not trying to share stuffaround the building and the way
(24:03):
point to multi-point thingswhere you've got client devices.
All you want is a couple ofclients that are outside, say,
of the village hall, with a badsignal, and they will probably
have to retransmit data becausethe signal's poor and then they
take up airtime.
(24:23):
Then, because you know, ifyou've got like you're trying to
download a file outside butyour wireless is like on one bar
, not five bar there's a goodchance you're going to get
retransmissions of data betweenthe access point and that device
.
Marc Smith (24:37):
All right, I didn't know that.
Ian Bolas (24:38):
Yeah, and then basically the way like a
wireless device works, there'sjust time slots on it and
there's only so much like somany time slots and the things
that you can have.
But even when you've got, like,I suppose, multiple channels
transmit and receiving uh anydevice that's uh, having to make
(25:01):
the access point work harder isbasically kind of dragging your
network down to some extentyeah, yeah, uh and it's some of
the newer hardware can probablyhide it better because they
might have, you know, multiplein multiple kind of uh or
multiple channels for doing thewireless.
Yeah, but even if you, if you'vegot a few devices on the same
wireless network and they'reusing whatever the channel is,
(25:25):
one device or a few devices withreally bad signal can upset the
ones with good signal, becauseright you know it's kind of
resource wise.
It's having to use a bit moreresource on the really bad
signal yeah.
Marc Smith (25:38):
So it's a good point if.
If part of your hall doesn'thave good signal, it's not
really worth leaving it alone.
You're better to deal with it,because otherwise it'll affect
the ones that have got a goodsignal.
It's not just it's not justsaying, oh, don't use the room
at the back because there's no,there's not decent wifi.
If they do, it's affecting thepeople who are standing right.
Could be standing right next tothe access point.
Ian Bolas (25:59):
Yes, yeah, it's clogging up basically what it
should be used for.
That's right.
Yeah, I suppose that's whereit's good to have separate
access points, uh for uh, eacharea or whatever you've got you
know.
So you've got a cable to say,uh, the main hall, or a couple
of antenna in the main hall, say, and then you've got, you know,
(26:20):
one in the lobby or what youknow and one outside, things
like that, and then at least ifyou do have one that's
performing badly, it's not likethe whole.
So if you can imagine if theywere meshed together before you
know it, you might find it'sjust one part of the whole is
causing all of the access pointsto just perform poorly.
Marc Smith (26:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Ian Bolas (26:40):
And then I suppose with the other thing, with a
mesh system, if, potentially, ifone or two of the mesh fail, it
might be all of it's offline.
Yeah, I suppose.
Yeah, yeah, if you're cable toeach device, uh, you, you've got
the kind of you can almost loseone and it maybe won't make a
massive difference, yeah, that'sa good point on to the wi-fi
sort of things you can have.
Marc Smith (27:02):
So village halls will want to have like a
community network but also anetwork where they can take
payments yeah you know, if theyhave, uh, I don't know, like a,
like a party or a kelly or awedding, they're taking money at
the bar.
You need to have a secure wi-fijust for that as well.
So with these access points youcan add in multiple like um
(27:24):
wi-fi networks, yes, and then Iassume that you can.
You can limit each of thosewi-fi networks for for speed.
So if you're limited to speedsay you had 20 you can see the
one the admin side of thingswould be would be more than the
general network.
Ian Bolas (27:38):
Yeah, you can.
You can do like, uh, you couldlimit the bandwidth or
prioritize traffic on aparticular uh wireless network
is a few different ways, Isuppose you know.
You like, I suppose, thetraditional way of having things
.
You have your, I don't know so,your village hall wi-fi and
then your your visitor wi-fiyeah, it'd be typically the
(27:59):
village hall wi-fi would be theone that maybe has the point of
sale device and any kind ofwhole related stuff, and then
you'd have your guest one foryour people turning up and you'd
limit the guest one uh, and,and typically it's on a separate
vlan, so it's like logicallyseparate yeah, but it's all from
(28:19):
the same wireless access point.
Marc Smith (28:20):
That's it, it's all.
You don't have to havedifferent that's devices for a
different way.
Ian Bolas (28:25):
Yeah, you've got one device, but it's presenting
several wireless networks andseveral VLANs, which are like
virtual LANs.
It's just a way of segregatingtraffic, that's all it's doing.
And that's kind of a prettystandard way of doing it and it
(28:47):
saves you having to have, Isuppose, this going back a long
time now.
Sometimes you would have aseparate interconnect, separate
internet connection for you knowthe, the till and the point of
sale equipment, and then you'dhave a.
Then you'd have anotherconnection for general, you know
, for general internet stuff.
(29:08):
You know that's the way youcould do it, because then you
know physically that internetconnection is just for taking
payments and then the otherone's just for the other stuff,
and it's a way of doing it.
Marc Smith (29:19):
But you could just you could just get a router and
kind of like profile things asyou yeah, I assume there'll be
some village halls that still dothat, because they've not
really progressed on to well.
You know, once you buy your kit, say 10 years ago, and it still
works, why would you change it?
Ian Bolas (29:34):
but when you look at it.
Marc Smith (29:35):
Yeah, you should relieve but keep reasonably up
to date anyway with what'swhat's new out there, especially
the amount of people that gointo hall.
You know, I know a 10 year oldrouter will not cope with 20 or
30 people in one.
No, this is, this is.
Ian Bolas (29:48):
This is this is another thing that your router
for your 8 meg broadband from 15years ago, uh, you could still
use it now, uh, but, like yousaid, number of devices
supported will be not very many.
And if you've got a 50 meginternet connection but you've
(30:09):
got an old router or not a verygood router that does Wi-Fi,
there's a good chance your Wi-Firouter is only going to be
doing 10, 15 meg that sort ofthing.
So, yeah, it's important tokind of keep up with those
things for sure, because youmight think your internet's you
(30:29):
know, on the internet it's quitebad, but actually it's the
internet's fine, it's the rootof it's connected to it.
It's the problem yeah,excellent.
Marc Smith (30:35):
Well, I think we've covered everything there that I
wanted to cover and not an awfullot of a stuff for people to
take in.
But I think, um, no matterwhere you are I suppose I
suppose we're suppose anywhereon the planet there's always an
option and it's nice to know,like minimum, minimum speeds are
good to know, but also, likethe you know, the community part
(30:55):
of things, which obviously youand I do is, is also an option
as well.
It's nice to know.
I'm glad.
I'm glad we've covered that,because it was interesting to
hear, uh, like the full story ofhevnet.
Whilst I'm in in hevnet I'venever really heard, I didn't
realize it was simon um that waswith uh, the guy from edinburgh
uni.
So it's good to know that it'sactually all these things are
possible, no matter how ruralyou are, because what I will do
(31:18):
after this uh podcast, I'll I'llget some information together
about where we actually are,because a lot of people might
not know, like the distancebetween between you and I just
now there's no land and it'sabout 14 miles, but our
connection comes in via,virtually, via wirelessly, into
into the village and it'severything it's.
So it's amazing what isactually possible.
(31:39):
Well, I'm.
I'm actually really glad thatour internet didn't cut off
during the call, because thatwould have been quite
embarrassing yeah, no, I I'm on4g, not joking.
Oh yeah, no, that's brilliantyeah well, thanks very much for
your time, ian.
It's been good to to talk toyou about actually about the
(31:59):
village hall side of things aswell yeah so, hopefully,
hopefully, some of these hallsthat are struggling with it can,
uh, take a listen to thepodcast and what you've been
saying and basically take it anddo something about it.
Ian Bolas (32:09):
No, that's it.
That's it and it's.
I'm sure a lot of thesespirituals there'll be a local
or someone that will probably belike quite keen to get involved
in putting stuff in, yeah, anddoing that sort of stuff.
You know so uh yeah, excellent,that's perfect.
Marc Smith (32:24):
Well cheers, Ian.
All right, spot on.
Many thanks to our headlinesponsor and specialist village
hall insurance provider, AlliedWestminster, the home of Village
Guard, for making this podcastpossible, and to online booking
system provider Hallmaster, whoalso sponsor our podcast and can
be found at hallmaster.
co.
uk.
(32:45):
You've been listening to theVillage Halls podcast, a unique
listening community forBritain's village community and
church halls and anyoneinterested in the vital services
they provide.
Don't forget entries for theVillage Halls Inspiration Awards
2025 are open now until the30th of September, so visit our
website to find out more and getinvolved.
(33:07):
We will be back again soon withanother episode.
For more information, visitthevillagehallspodcast.
com, where you'll also findlinks to our social media pages.
Thanks again for listening inand until next time.
Goodbye for now.
Hi, I'm Marc Smith and welcome to the Village Halls
podcast, sponsored by AlliedWestminster, the UK's largest
specialist provider of VillageHall insurance, and the home of
Village Guard.
Before we begin, a quickreminder that entries are now
open for the Village HallsInspiration Awards 2025,
celebrating the incredible workhappening in village, community
(00:24):
and church halls across thecountry.
You can apply between the 1stof May and the 30th of September
, so do consider putting yourhall forward.
Welcome to the Village Hallspodcast.
In this episode, we're going todive into the world of internet
connectivity for Village Halls.
If you've heard me talk aboutmy fibre work in the community,
(00:45):
you might think we're justrepeating ourselves, but this
time it's a little bit different, because today we're focusing
on the practicalities.
So what internet options areactually available for village
halls and, crucially, how youcan get your hall connected?
So, from 4G to Starlink andexisting fibre to copper, we
will break down the pros andcons and share real-world
experiences to help you make thebest choice.
(01:07):
So, to complement this episode,I'm also putting together a
handy how-to guide for ourwebsite, inspired by what I'll
be doing right after editingthis podcast heading down to my
own village hall to set up theirWi-Fi.
I'll be tackling those deadzones and making sure everyone
can get connected.
So I should mention too thatwe're not just talking in theory
here.
Our work with Hebnet, cic andother local initiatives has
(01:30):
covered a staggering 600 squaremiles of the Highlands and
Islands, so we know a thing ortwo about finding solutions that
really work for ruralcommunities.
Joining me for this conversationis Ian Bolas, co-director of
Hebnet CIC.
Ian's knowledge of ruralinternet options far surpasses
anyone else I know, making himthe perfect guest for this
episode.
So let's get into it.
(01:51):
Welcome to the podcast, ian.
Thanks for having me, Marc, noworries.
Well, I think it's best to beup front as well.
We are actually co-directorstwo of four of the CIC Hebnet,
two or four of the CIC Hebnetand we provide, I suppose, the
(02:12):
internet to quite a large areaup here in the west coast of
Scotland.
But I came in quite late toHebnet because you were using
the village I live in as a kindof hop to another island.
So be really good if you cantell us a little bit why, like
when Hebnet was created and whyit was created.
Ian Bolas (02:26):
Right, yeah, so Hebnet was created in I think it
was 2011,.
The actual business was formed,I think we trialled stuff in
2010.
And it was basically becausethe small aisles where we
started there was just nointernet really for anyone there
(02:47):
other than satellite, and thesatellite available at the time
was affected by the weather,expensive and it was kind of
probably not dissimilar todial-up in terms of performance.
That in terms of performance,uh.
So some residents on egg, oneof the other directors of
(03:08):
headnet, simon hellowell he, hewas dealing with edinburgh
university and I was uh lookingto buy a house on rum and to
kind of cut a long story short,we did some trials with some
five gigahertz lightly licensedhardware and the kind of general
principle that if we could takean internet connection from the
mainland and send it wirelesslyacross the islands, it would
(03:31):
give us a better service than wecould from us.
We could get from the satelliteservices and I suppose our
destiny was a bit more in ourown hands.
If we did that, if we gotpeople to sign up to it, we
could maybe get more bandwidthand things like that.
So, as you mentioned it, oncewe got going with things we had
(03:56):
to go to Elgol to get to Canna,which is the most westerly point
of the headnet, and so, yeah,we just used Elg a as a bounce
between rum and canna.
Uh and uh.
Obviously then later on, whenalgol kind of came on board
that's when you came on as well,and yeah, you know, we expanded
(04:18):
uh to include algol in our, inour networks, like I suppose, as
you know, although algol's partof sky, it's quite kind of
quite isolated other than theroad coming down.
So you'll, you'll suffer from,uh, the same issues in some
respects as we do on the islandsunreliable power, poor internet
(04:38):
, things like that.
So some of these things youjust have to kind of go off and
fix yourself, if you can to someextent yeah, well, I know the
bt is still, it still has apresence here in algo, but it's
zero.
Marc Smith (04:49):
It's still 0.47 uh meg download speed, so it's
still shockingly poor.
So I suppose if headnet,headnet had not come along,
that's although we have otheroptions now.
Uh, on the last maybe two yearsit's been a massive issue uh,
throughout covid and yeah reallyshone up.
How, how, how, how much.
You need a reliable internetconnection because covid was
(05:11):
everyone working from home inthis area where there was no.
You know, there's no optionsfor for internet besides what we
were doing.
Ian Bolas (05:18):
Yeah I think it's a good point with with the whole
covid thing like 2020, 2021,where everyone was working from
home or couldn't leave the houseor whatever, and the importance
of the internet went in ruralareas.
It went from being kind of, Isuppose, a nice to have and
(05:39):
might support your business toan essential, with everyone
doing Zoom calls, keeping intouch with family, or WhatsApp
calls, whatever.
And the thing that still getsme now is we set up Hebnet in
2011 with a view it was going tobe medium-term option until you
know, fibre or whatever gotdone by BT, scottish government,
(06:01):
uk government or whoever.
And, as you mentioned, 2025 now, and the broadband speed
offered in algol in 2011 was0.47 and 14 years later it's
it's improved to a 0.47, whichis nothing.
Yeah, and the small aislesannoyed are uh, there is no
(06:22):
option with bt.
Uh, for any service through thecopper telephone lines here.
Yeah, and like, as you mentioned, the only real change is
starlink, uh, as one of theoptions and other than kind of,
I would say, speed wise it's.
It's probably comparable toheadnet.
When you average out yourupload and your download and and
(06:44):
download and heavy usage, peakperiods and things like that.
The main difference between thetwo products is the cost.
I would say that's the maindifference there.
But it's just crazy that in 14years there has been zero
progress outside of Hebnet inthis area.
Marc Smith (07:03):
Yeah, it's pretty, um, depressing really, because I
remember when I moved here in2011, everyone in the village
was oh yeah, btr coming nextyear, coming next year because I
I relied on it a lot because ofthe, the video work I was doing
so like when you've got 0.47 inthe dangle the carrot, it never
, ever came.
So I again went to satellite,which is the old two-way system
(07:24):
yeah and you're limited to Idon't know a certain speed, but
I suppose, thankfully, now we'vegot there's a lot more options.
But as you're saying that itwas simon um on that l of egg,
so he was working with was heworking with edinburgh uni for
something?
Ian Bolas (07:38):
and that's how we got in touch with yeah, so yeah, so
it was uh a guy called peterbuneman, a professor at
edinburgh, and he he was uh in adepartment that was kind of
always looking at ways toimprove like rural, rural
settings of internet or whatever, and he he's from loch horn so
he set the stuff up thereoriginally and simon basically
(08:02):
got in contact with him aboutcould we do something similar
for egg, and that just we we wegot equipment off them some of
your ubiquity equipment, I thinkjust loaned it to proof of
concept, yeah that you couldsend a signal from aris egg or
mal egg on the mainland to eggand then distribute it.
Marc Smith (08:19):
That was how many miles, is that?
Ian Bolas (08:22):
So Egg is roughly 15 miles from Mallaig.
Marc Smith (08:27):
All right right.
Ian Bolas (08:28):
As does the Crow Flies, yeah, yeah, and Rum's
about 16 to 17 miles as the CrowFlies, yeah, and that's how
Simon kind of got the initialsetup.
And when Simon set it up, Ithink he had 10 houses in
cleardale, which is the with afair sorry, wasn't clear, that
was in garmasdale.
(08:48):
Uh, he had, I know, 10 housesor something like five, 10
houses there.
I think they were paying sevenpound fifty each just to cover
the cost of like electric andall right, a few other things.
And that's how the initial Isuppose, proof of concept right
there happening isn't it.
But I think it's when we talkabout back at 2011,.
(09:12):
I remember coming to RUM andyou click a YouTube video, go
and make a cup of tea.
By the time you'd done that,you'd hoped it had loaded.
By the time you'd done that,you'd hoped it had loaded.
And one of the biggest I'd sayone of the biggest things I
always found would come into thesmall aisles, or, yeah, I'd say
(09:32):
the small aisles was thatpeople's use of the internet was
different to the mainland, whenI don't think it should be
different, because you know wehave electric on the small isles
.
You know each island's got itsown grid.
You know, with renewables andthings like that, and although
(09:53):
we're not allowed to use as muchelectric as other houses, you
can still use TVs, washingmachines, all these you know, I
suppose, things that you'dexpect to be able to use on the
mainland.
Yeah, the only things we don'thave an electric side are like
showers and cookers, but you,you know there's alternatives
for that.
(10:13):
You know it's not like you.
Just you know you can't have acooker, it's just a gas cooker,
whereas with the internet it wasa like, because the internet
was so poor here, especially foryoungsters or people wanting to
work from home.
You couldn't have.
Facebook wasn't a thing forpeople because it was just too
(10:35):
slow YouTube was not reallybeing experienced properly by
people.
So things like that, where therewas a clear disadvantage to
living on an island there interms of you didn't get the same
quality of service for yourinternet yeah, yeah, whereas you
still had.
Your electric was normal, youknow, your normal water, you
know, uh, there was no, no realhardships for your electric and
(10:58):
water.
I think the internet's classedas a human right now, I think uh
yeah and and like electric andwater are.
So what should the internet be?
Suched as a human right now?
I think, uh, yeah, and and likeelectrical water are.
So why should the internet besuch, you know, so far behind
the mainland and it puts you ata disadvantage.
You know, uh, and I would.
I would say I've certainly seen, since we started hebnet and we
you know, we've got fiber insome places and and things that
(11:23):
Obviously the internet now isused.
People have smartphones here,people have point-of-sale
devices.
They'll have them in Elgo, youknow, at the like Bella Jane, or
your the Misty.
Marc Smith (11:38):
Isle.
Ian Bolas (11:38):
Misty Isle, places like that and everywhere.
No one carries cash anymore onthe islands it's all cards you
know yeah yeah, or it's apayment on your smartphone.
So all of these things nowwithout a reliable internet
connection, uh, you know, itjust wouldn't work for people,
(11:59):
uh and it would it would justaffect how these islands have an
opportunity to develop.
The same with algol as well, andnoida, that without a half
decent connection just peoplecan't kind of move there.
Uh, and I know starlinkobviously is kind of like, I
suppose, our main competitor anduh, as an option, but like for
(12:19):
the likes of, say, misty isle,for example, you know, do they
want to be paying 75 pounds amonth 12 months of the year?
Yeah, yeah, you know it's a bigexpense uh for people and they
don't really, they don't reallyneed, they just need a
connection that we don't need100 meg connection or 200 meg,
(12:40):
yeah, yeah, uh, and even if theywould manage to get a bt
connection at your 0.47 meg, uh,it's still uh, 30 quid a month,
40 quid a month, you know.
Marc Smith (12:50):
So yes the thing.
Yeah, because bt don't chargebased on speed, it's just the
service as long as you can tickthe box with the service, but
even that's it like that'syou're still getting 30 pound a
month.
Ian Bolas (12:59):
That's it.
So it's, it's, it's things likethat.
And and I know elg is probablya bit different from the small
aisles the average salary in thesmall aisles is just people
can't afford to spend £700 or£800 a year on their internet.
Marc Smith (13:14):
Yeah.
Ian Bolas (13:16):
So there's quite a few factors in that we've been
able to support a bit of growthby doing this project or
business model as well which hasbeen quite good yeah.
Marc Smith (13:34):
So I suppose we're talking about starlink there.
So if we can run over some ofthe options for village halls,
so I think the only time thatstarlink would even enter into
it, if there's nothing, you knowyou've literally got nothing,
and and I would consider bt'shalf a meg nothing, because it
would be unbeatable, you knowunbeatable and it would.
It wouldn't open up anyopportunities for businesses.
(13:54):
So I think the only chance, theonly reason you would need to
have starlink would be if therewas literally nothing.
So no bt presence, no 4g, whichis amazingly still a few places
in the country with no 4g um.
I think that would be the only,only the only reason um to have
starlink, because I get calledup quite a lot through my it it
(14:16):
business about starlink and halfthe time I just say go outside,
get your phone out and do aquick speed check on your phone
using the 4g.
And they've got the 4gavailable as well and the 4g
speeds I have, you know well,you know torrent, which is only,
you know, 10 miles from me.
I got a speed check of 240 megthere last week when I was
checking someone's connection.
(14:37):
So that's a good um, goodalternative if bt are not there,
but see you in terms of whatyou know about 4g.
What are the kind of?
There's limitations with 4g aswell?
What would you say if?
If there was 4g, if that wasthe only option for village
halls, what would be thelimitations to consider for for
that?
Ian Bolas (14:56):
yeah, I suppose it's tricky with 4g, like you, you
you've got some good speedsthere in kind of taurine and and
where you've been past, andit's, I think, the lack of
people, it's purely it's purelylack of people because those
cell sites have, say, one gigcapacity.
If you were to have a, avillage hall in a in a small
(15:20):
town, uh, or small village even,depending where the cell site
is and the distance, the 4gmight not be so good at all.
Uh, and it's purely kind ofbased on what other users are on
on the cell at the time.
I know if you were to go offonto the mainland, you know, to
(15:41):
fort william or inverness, likeI know, if you've got 5g, it's
different but I would.
I would be surprised if you'vegot 4g performance like you get
in torrent.
Uh, yeah, definitely, andbecause it could purely be
because you've got 500 devicesconnected in a cell near
Inverness, say.
The reality is Torin's probablygot less than 50 devices
(16:04):
connected to it.
Marc Smith (16:05):
Yeah, I know that when I went to see a rugby game
in Murrayfield they were not asingle bit.
It was full 4G, 4 bars on thephone but not a single bit of
data could transfer.
That's yeah.
Because of the volume of peoplethat were on that, yeah, that
mass site that's one thing.
Ian Bolas (16:23):
It goes to show where , uh, the certainly stadiums
where I've been in, stadiumswhere you've had a sporting
event, things like that, and youmight try and send a picture of
, like the winning try or thatkind of thing, yeah.
And or new year's eve isanother good example of where if
, yeah, you know if you're at aconcert or a stadium, uh, yeah,
(16:46):
the 4g can't hack it that's agood point.
Marc Smith (16:49):
I still get the odd text about an hour before
midnight in new year to saybecause I can't contact you
later on.
A happy new year now, andthat's still a thing, isn't it
really?
Ian Bolas (16:58):
yeah, and that's it and all, I suppose all of these
internet services, they all,they're all based on contention
ratios, uh and uh.
Depending on the provider, youmight work on a content.
You know like, I think bt usedto go on a 50 to 1 contention on
their back, I think if youordered a business product, it
(17:20):
was 40 to 1 or 25 to 1.
But it was effectively if youordered, say, a 2 meg product
and this is a long time ago now,I think the way it worked was
that BT in their data centerwould go on the assumption that
2 meg would be enough for 50users, because when you put the
(17:42):
two meg into, say, 50, lots oftwo meg, you'd have 100 meg and
not everyone would be using itat the same time, et cetera, so
you'd have less people competingfor that kind of bit of
bandwidth.
Marc Smith (17:56):
Yeah, yeah.
Ian Bolas (17:57):
And if you're buying a business project, it costs
more, but no one because you hadyou were sharing it with less
people.
Yeah, yeah, and like the onlythe only true products out there
.
Uh, your least line productsfor internet, which obviously
very expensive, but that'sone-to-one, so you have one gig
from, say, your house toEdinburgh.
Marc Smith (18:22):
Is that effectively what a business plan is?
They're always more expensive,so I assume the business plan is
more expensive, but it'sbecause you get less people
battling for that.
Ian Bolas (18:32):
There'll be reduced contention I've not looked at
the small print for yearsbecause I've not been buying
business products but it'll beless contention, I would imagine
, and they'll try and sell you abetter service.
You know where it might be acase that they'll respond to
your call quicker, things likethat.
(18:54):
The old leased line productsused to have an option I think
of like a four, eight or maybefour, eight or 12-hour response
on a leased line, but you justpay more money for it.
If you wanted a four-hour fixyou'd probably pay double or
triple the price.
Marc Smith (19:11):
What's Hibnett's response time?
Ian Bolas (19:15):
Well, this is the thing.
Well, come on to a good thingthere.
Like I know, we don't offer aresponse time as such, like
typically uh, we'll, it'll besame day.
Typically, I would say, yeah,uh and that's not just a
response.
Marc Smith (19:31):
That's more a fix, isn't it?
Yes?
Ian Bolas (19:34):
yeah, typically certainly like if you've got an
outage or a device failure,stuff like that, it'll be same
day.
And one thing with the islandsand Noida as well, and even
Helgo, I think, it's two weeksbefore you'll see a BT engineer
rock up.
And it's not to have a go at BTor BT Openreach, but that's the
(19:55):
reality of when you have a linewith a big provider go to bt or
bt open reach, but that'sthat's the reality of when you,
when you have a line with with aa big provider uh, the response
time for your standardresidential product they're
probably not going to fix itvery quickly yeah, yeah that's
just the nature of the beast, uh, and like if you, I'd imagine
if you had a fault at your cellsite in uh elgol, say, or torin,
(20:20):
you know, like your 4g, yeah,you could be talking a couple of
days potentially I know up thenorth end of sky.
Marc Smith (20:26):
They went down and it was about three days yes or
uh, yeah it was.
It was that someone was someonehas a 4g connection in their
holiday let and they actuallywent out and bought starlight
because they couldn't be doingwith the constant outages from
the 4g mast yeah, you and youget these issues.
Ian Bolas (20:42):
You know it could be that you've got power issues to
the site or radio issues or justhardware issues bad cables
whatever you know and it's itcan impact uh, you know the
response times or theavailability of a service as
well.
Marc Smith (21:02):
It's a tricky one when it comes to village halls.
What would you say?
They don't need to do a greatdeal, but what would you say?
A minimum speed they should betrying to target.
If they went outside to roughlydo a 4G speed check with
whatever SIM card they've got,what would be the minimum?
Ian Bolas (21:17):
Because some of these village halls do have like they
have like showings of like livesports or national theater I
think, I think, yeah, I thinknowadays, I think you'd be you'd
be wanting kind of like 50 meg,would be like, yeah, the
reality is you could probablystream something pretty well on
10 to 20 uh, but if I suppose,if you have like a kind of, if
(21:39):
you're averaging around the 50mark, you know there's plenty of
.
You know there's because if ifthey're streaming an event in a
hall, you can't tell everyone,don't use your phone because
it'll cause the, it'll cause therugby to buffer or whatever.
Uh, so you need you need enoughto support the other devices as
well.
But then that might be whereyou set your wireless up or your
(22:03):
network in your village hall toprioritize or have a network
that's on for the streaming andthen a separate network that's
all your clients or customers orthat side of things.
Marc Smith (22:18):
Yeah, well, that's a very good link into the Wi-Fi
inside the Holly and so thanksfor that.
So yeah, once you get, saywhatever you've got going into
the building, be it BT or 4G orStarlink, what's the best way to
distribute it around?
Because I mean, I get a lot ofpeople asking about wireless
(22:39):
meshes and I've never reallybeen a fan of wireless meshes
because of the it.
Just at least you know if it'snot wired, I always think it's
an issue.
But what's your, what's youropinion on?
If it was a village hall asksyou, what would you be?
What would you be recommendingfor them?
Ian Bolas (22:54):
yeah, it's like wireless is such a complicated I
think it's a complicated kindof discussion because, like you,
like you said that if you havea, typically if you have a wire
from between two devices, youknow that you've got x amount of
capacity between those twopoints.
(23:15):
Yeah, uh, was like wirelessmesh type system where, say,
you've got the the generaltraffic going between the meshes
to get back to, uh, your routeror your switch or whatever
you've got it.
There's a lot of factors thatcan upset that uh.
So for me, I I personally liketo have a, a cabinet where I've
(23:39):
got my internet, you know, 4gconnection coming in and then a
switch and then a cable going toeach access point is.
Or, you know each wirelessdevice is my preferred way of
doing it.
Yeah, uh, because you know eachwireless device, then all that,
all that device is doing, isclient related conversations.
It's not trying to share stuffaround the building and the way
(24:03):
point to multi-point thingswhere you've got client devices.
All you want is a couple ofclients that are outside, say,
of the village hall, with a badsignal, and they will probably
have to retransmit data becausethe signal's poor and then they
take up airtime.
(24:23):
Then, because you know, ifyou've got like you're trying to
download a file outside butyour wireless is like on one bar
, not five bar there's a goodchance you're going to get
retransmissions of data betweenthe access point and that device
.
Marc Smith (24:37):
All right, I didn't know that.
Ian Bolas (24:38):
Yeah, and then basically the way like a
wireless device works, there'sjust time slots on it and
there's only so much like somany time slots and the things
that you can have.
But even when you've got, like,I suppose, multiple channels
transmit and receiving uh anydevice that's uh, having to make
(25:01):
the access point work harder isbasically kind of dragging your
network down to some extentyeah, yeah, uh and it's some of
the newer hardware can probablyhide it better because they
might have, you know, multiplein multiple kind of uh or
multiple channels for doing thewireless.
Yeah, but even if you, if you'vegot a few devices on the same
wireless network and they'reusing whatever the channel is,
(25:25):
one device or a few devices withreally bad signal can upset the
ones with good signal, becauseright you know it's kind of
resource wise.
It's having to use a bit moreresource on the really bad
signal yeah.
Marc Smith (25:38):
So it's a good point if.
If part of your hall doesn'thave good signal, it's not
really worth leaving it alone.
You're better to deal with it,because otherwise it'll affect
the ones that have got a goodsignal.
It's not just it's not justsaying, oh, don't use the room
at the back because there's no,there's not decent wifi.
If they do, it's affecting thepeople who are standing right.
Could be standing right next tothe access point.
Ian Bolas (25:59):
Yes, yeah, it's clogging up basically what it
should be used for.
That's right.
Yeah, I suppose that's whereit's good to have separate
access points, uh for uh, eacharea or whatever you've got you
know.
So you've got a cable to say,uh, the main hall, or a couple
of antenna in the main hall, say, and then you've got, you know,
(26:20):
one in the lobby or what youknow and one outside, things
like that, and then at least ifyou do have one that's
performing badly, it's not likethe whole.
So if you can imagine if theywere meshed together before you
know it, you might find it'sjust one part of the whole is
causing all of the access pointsto just perform poorly.
Marc Smith (26:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Ian Bolas (26:40):
And then I suppose with the other thing, with a
mesh system, if, potentially, ifone or two of the mesh fail, it
might be all of it's offline.
Yeah, I suppose.
Yeah, yeah, if you're cable toeach device, uh, you, you've got
the kind of you can almost loseone and it maybe won't make a
massive difference, yeah, that'sa good point on to the wi-fi
sort of things you can have.
Marc Smith (27:02):
So village halls will want to have like a
community network but also anetwork where they can take
payments yeah you know, if theyhave, uh, I don't know, like a,
like a party or a kelly or awedding, they're taking money at
the bar.
You need to have a secure wi-fijust for that as well.
So with these access points youcan add in multiple like um
(27:24):
wi-fi networks, yes, and then Iassume that you can.
You can limit each of thosewi-fi networks for for speed.
So if you're limited to speedsay you had 20 you can see the
one the admin side of thingswould be would be more than the
general network.
Ian Bolas (27:38):
Yeah, you can.
You can do like, uh, you couldlimit the bandwidth or
prioritize traffic on aparticular uh wireless network
is a few different ways, Isuppose you know.
You like, I suppose, thetraditional way of having things
.
You have your, I don't know so,your village hall wi-fi and
then your your visitor wi-fiyeah, it'd be typically the
(27:59):
village hall wi-fi would be theone that maybe has the point of
sale device and any kind ofwhole related stuff, and then
you'd have your guest one foryour people turning up and you'd
limit the guest one uh, and,and typically it's on a separate
vlan, so it's like logicallyseparate yeah, but it's all from
(28:19):
the same wireless access point.
Marc Smith (28:20):
That's it, it's all.
You don't have to havedifferent that's devices for a
different way.
Ian Bolas (28:25):
Yeah, you've got one device, but it's presenting
several wireless networks andseveral VLANs, which are like
virtual LANs.
It's just a way of segregatingtraffic, that's all it's doing.
And that's kind of a prettystandard way of doing it and it
(28:47):
saves you having to have, Isuppose, this going back a long
time now.
Sometimes you would have aseparate interconnect, separate
internet connection for you knowthe, the till and the point of
sale equipment, and then you'dhave a.
Then you'd have anotherconnection for general, you know
, for general internet stuff.
(29:08):
You know that's the way youcould do it, because then you
know physically that internetconnection is just for taking
payments and then the otherone's just for the other stuff,
and it's a way of doing it.
Marc Smith (29:19):
But you could just you could just get a router and
kind of like profile things asyou yeah, I assume there'll be
some village halls that still dothat, because they've not
really progressed on to well.
You know, once you buy your kit, say 10 years ago, and it still
works, why would you change it?
Ian Bolas (29:34):
but when you look at it.
Marc Smith (29:35):
Yeah, you should relieve but keep reasonably up
to date anyway with what'swhat's new out there, especially
the amount of people that gointo hall.
You know, I know a 10 year oldrouter will not cope with 20 or
30 people in one.
No, this is, this is.
Ian Bolas (29:48):
This is this is another thing that your router
for your 8 meg broadband from 15years ago, uh, you could still
use it now, uh, but, like yousaid, number of devices
supported will be not very many.
And if you've got a 50 meginternet connection but you've
(30:09):
got an old router or not a verygood router that does Wi-Fi,
there's a good chance your Wi-Firouter is only going to be
doing 10, 15 meg that sort ofthing.
So, yeah, it's important tokind of keep up with those
things for sure, because youmight think your internet's you
(30:29):
know, on the internet it's quitebad, but actually it's the
internet's fine, it's the rootof it's connected to it.
It's the problem yeah,excellent.
Marc Smith (30:35):
Well, I think we've covered everything there that I
wanted to cover and not an awfullot of a stuff for people to
take in.
But I think, um, no matterwhere you are I suppose I
suppose we're suppose anywhereon the planet there's always an
option and it's nice to know,like minimum, minimum speeds are
good to know, but also, likethe you know, the community part
(30:55):
of things, which obviously youand I do is, is also an option
as well.
It's nice to know.
I'm glad.
I'm glad we've covered that,because it was interesting to
hear, uh, like the full story ofhevnet.
Whilst I'm in in hevnet I'venever really heard, I didn't
realize it was simon um that waswith uh, the guy from edinburgh
uni.
So it's good to know that it'sactually all these things are
possible, no matter how ruralyou are, because what I will do
(31:18):
after this uh podcast, I'll I'llget some information together
about where we actually are,because a lot of people might
not know, like the distancebetween between you and I just
now there's no land and it'sabout 14 miles, but our
connection comes in via,virtually, via wirelessly, into
into the village and it'severything it's.
So it's amazing what isactually possible.
(31:39):
Well, I'm.
I'm actually really glad thatour internet didn't cut off
during the call, because thatwould have been quite
embarrassing yeah, no, I I'm on4g, not joking.
Oh yeah, no, that's brilliantyeah well, thanks very much for
your time, ian.
It's been good to to talk toyou about actually about the
(31:59):
village hall side of things aswell yeah so, hopefully,
hopefully, some of these hallsthat are struggling with it can,
uh, take a listen to thepodcast and what you've been
saying and basically take it anddo something about it.
Ian Bolas (32:09):
No, that's it.
That's it and it's.
I'm sure a lot of thesespirituals there'll be a local
or someone that will probably belike quite keen to get involved
in putting stuff in, yeah, anddoing that sort of stuff.
You know so uh yeah, excellent,that's perfect.
Marc Smith (32:24):
Well cheers, Ian.
All right, spot on.
Many thanks to our headlinesponsor and specialist village
hall insurance provider, AlliedWestminster, the home of Village
Guard, for making this podcastpossible, and to online booking
system provider Hallmaster, whoalso sponsor our podcast and can
be found at hallmaster.
co.
uk.
(32:45):
You've been listening to theVillage Halls podcast, a unique
listening community forBritain's village community and
church halls and anyoneinterested in the vital services
they provide.
Don't forget entries for theVillage Halls Inspiration Awards
2025 are open now until the30th of September, so visit our
website to find out more and getinvolved.
(33:07):
We will be back again soon withanother episode.
For more information, visitthevillagehallspodcast.
com, where you'll also findlinks to our social media pages.
Thanks again for listening inand until next time.
Goodbye for now.
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