Gradwell customer Rutland Telecom is featured in the Observer this may bank holiday as they gain traction in becoming the first company in the UK to unbundle broadband and phone services at the street level in the village of Lyddington, near Rutland water.

Gradwell is helping Rutland Telecom by porting the phone numbers from BT, and converting them into VoIP phone calls which are then delivered down a dedicated fibre link into the local area.

“Speeds of up to 40Mbps (80x faster than most Lyddington residents are getting now) and greater reliability should be expected. The technology is known as VDSL. We will also be offering symmetrical SDSL services. Future-proofing comes with the possibility that lines can be bonded to achieve higher speeds or services could be delivered via Fibre to the Home (FTTH) as is increasingly the case in Japan, Norway USA etc.

Lyddington will be the first place in the UK to receive Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) coupled with unbundled symmetrical services.

Lyddington is in something of a mobile-reception black hole so we are keen to improve this by offering Quality of Service for VoIP and mobile calls over our network in the near future. Residents will be able to get excellent mobile network coverage from our router in their home.”

For more information please see http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/03/digital-britain-rural-communities-broadband and http://www.rutlandtelecom.co.uk/lyddington/index.html