Given the various problems that I’m currently having with BT and moving Broadband to a new house (follow the saga on Twitter – I’m regularly moaning about it there!), maybe I should follow the example from the residents of a village in Rutland, who have raised £37,000 to install a super-fast broadband network after BT decided it wouldn’t be cost-effective to do so.

Lyddington’s local residents clubbed together to raise enough money to set up their own telecoms company, Rutland Telecom. The next step was to team up with a local firm reselling BT’s broadband in order to install the network, which is the fastest of all rural broadband networks in the UK. The residents of Lyddington, who had previously not even been able to access broadband speeds of 2Mbps because of network infrastructure issues, are now enjoying broadband with speeds of up to 40Mbps.

Rutland Telecom’s managing director, Dr. David Lewis, told the BBC: “We found that any company could do, on a smaller scale, what Carphone Warehouse has done and take over BT’s network … we could utilise parts of BT’s existing infrastructure and supply next generation broadband services via community funded projects.”

Rutland Telecom says it has already been approached by 40 other rural community groups to help assess whether a similar solution is possible in their area, with projects elsewhere in the Midlands and Wales reportedly in the pipeline.

The Government has pledged to provide all UK homes with a minimum broadband connection speed of 2Mbps by 2012, and at least 24Mbps by 2020. If Lyddington’s case is anything to go by, it looks as though community solutions are the key to making this happen, given that BT and Virgin Media are still taking the position that installing fibre networks in rural areas is not profitable.

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