Burnside brings telecoms to the “back o’beyond”
Published January 16, 2008 at 11:04 pm · Filed under Comms / IT
Burnside brings telecoms to the ‘back o’beyond’
Burnside Telecom has brought voice and data communications to the most remote building in England. Located on a 1,500ft high plateau between Skiddaw and Blencathra mountains in the English Lake District, Skiddaw House is 3½ miles from the nearest road, has no mains electricity, no postal delivery and no landline telephone.
Described by Alfred Wainwright as being ‘at the back o’beyond’, the house was originally built as a dwelling for gamekeepers and shepherds in the early 1800s. It is now used by the Skiddaw House Foundation Trust to provide simple accommodation for walkers and cyclists at a cost of £10 per night.
In order to run the hostel successfully, the Trust needed to provide a way for people to book accommodation either by phone or email. But this was proving difficult. British Telecom had quoted a prohibitive sum of £65,000 to install a landline some 10 years ago; satellite phone communication costs are unaffordable; and not even mobile phones are able to work in such a remote location.
Fortunately a trustee came across the Burnside Desktop Mobile on the Internet, which, when connected to an external aerial at Skiddaw House, was within range of the Vodafone GSM/GPRS network. The Burnside terminal was then fitted with a Vodafone SIM on a pay monthly tariff with a 120MB web browsing pack.
An ordinary desktop phone and a PC connected via USB cable to the Burnside T900 now provide voice communications, Internet access, email and SMS text messaging.
Since the Burnside unit can work from mains or from 8-32VDC, the terminal is permanently powered by the hostel’s DC batteries. These, in turn, are charged from a standby LPG powered generator and trickle charged by solar cells.
Martin Webster, Warden of Skiddaw House, commented: “The Burnside terminal has transformed our lives up here in the mountains enabling visitors to phone or email their bookings and letting us keep in contact with our friends and relatives. This was never possible before.”
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