ci connect | Issue 12
Solihull Community Housing leads the way in social regeneration
Solihull Community Housing (SCH), a not-for-profit management organisation wholly owned by Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council is responsible for administering all aspects of the 11,000 homes that are part of the council’s housing stock. Its responsibilities cover various housing management tasks from waiting lists and repairs to rent collections and the right to buy. SCH has embarked on an ambitious programme of service improvements to help create sustainable communities. This has meant going beyond the traditional brief of providing routine landlord services, to creating new approaches that help local citizens to become more independent. One example is the project set up to deliver free or subsidized Internet connectivity to residents housed in the tower blocks or multi-dwelling units (MDUs) in North Solihull.
The tenants within the MDUs are a mixture of long term unemployed, low paid workers, single parent families with young children and those with disabilities. SCH felt the many members of community would benefit from Internet access but would struggle to afford it.
Surveys conducted by SCH indicated an increasing willingness among tenants to embrace the Internet. Some of the reasons highlighted in the research included tenants wanting to use the web to improve IT literacy skills in order to widen employment prospects, to gain greater access to Social Services and support organisations, to provide an educational resource for schoolchildren and to allow the benefits of online banking and shopping to be enjoyed by the elderly and infirm.
“We felt that Internet access would help improve quality of life and open up new opportunities for many of the tenants,” explains Chris Deery, Head of IT at SCH, who was involved in solving the IT issues related to the project. “Among the technical hurdles we faced was the challenge of finding a low cost, low maintenance, reliable way of providing Internet connectivity. We wanted to minimize the civil engineering work required to deliver a connectivity infrastructure to the multi-storey buildings, as well avoid causing disruption to individual tenants during implementation. We also wanted to a solution with the ability to expand over time so we could roll it out to more tenants in future,” he explains.
The Solution
One solution, proposed by a major cable operator, was to run conventional broadband cables to the individual buildings and then distribute Internet connectivity to tenants’ homes by installing wireless broadband routers on alternative floors – thus creating a series of wireless networks throughout the buildings. However, after further evaluation SCH were convinced that an alternative wireless solution proposed by CI-Net would more effectively meet its requirements. CI-Net suggested delivering Internet bandwidth to the buildings using its RedKite wireless connectivity service. Known as the ‘leased line in the sky’, RedKite is based on Pre-WiMax technology which uses radio signals to deliver high speed, symmetrical broadband without physical telecoms lines.
As part of the RedKite network that supplies connectivity to local businesses in a growing number of UK cities a RedKite radio base station had already been installed by CI-Net in Yardley - only five miles from the SCH site. CI-Net’s solution involved using this RedKite base station to send a broadband wireless signal to a receiver located on the roof of one of the SCH buildings. The signal can then be divided and relayed to the remaining buildings using point-to-point wireless equipment, creating a wireless ‘mesh’. This incoming bandwidth is then transferred to the electricity cables running to individual flats and tenants that qualify to receive Internet access can be provided with specially designed connector units, which can be plugged into any three-point socket within the flats.
“Tenants will be supplied with Ethernet cables to link the connecter units directly to laptops, home PCs or set-top boxes to receive Internet connectivity, “explains Deery.
The Benefits
The RedKite service is similar to dedicated leased lines which are sometimes used by businesses who want powerful, reliable Internet links. But it avoids the high costs and limitations usually associated with conventional leased line connectivity. Although a wireless solution, it is robust and reliable and includes a Service Level Agreement with a delivery target availability of 99.99 per cent.
“Running cable to individual buildings could have worked out more costly and problematic because it required digging up the road,” says Deery. “RedKite allows a faster deployment across the sites, greater flexibility and actively reduces the need for civil engineering.” Using the electrical infrastructure to feed Internet power to the flats avoids having to install routers to create wireless networks within the buildings. “We were a little worried about the routers - which would have been placed in stairwells or corridors - being at risk of damage or theft. We could have boxed them in for protection but that would have weakened the signal. The connectors that CI-Net is providing will be used within the safety of individual flats. And because they have a unique IP address identifying each user individually, there’s little chance they’ll be stolen as they have no resale value, he continues.”
The RedKite solution will create a wireless hotspot area in the shadow of the SCH buildings which can be part of a range of council incentives to attract local businesses to help regenerate the area.
SCH is receiving council funding for its initiative as well as applying for funding from the European Regional Development Fund to enable it to extend the service to even more tower blocks. The benefits provided by the project will be assessed by conducting surveys among the users and this information will be used to justify rolling it out to other buildings and potentially to other parts of Solihull.
Chris accepts that he and his IT team, aided by CI-Net, have created an innovative way of delivering Internet to the tenants: “We’re providing some very advanced technology which helps us avoid the some of the problems and costs of traditional cable links. But that’s only half the battle. The other part is about helping those who have little experience of using technology to feel comfortable using the Internet and showing them what it can add to their lives.”
To address this issue, SCH is working with the charity ReCOM who will provide re-cycled Personal Computers and is being supported by the training organisation, the Colebridge Trust, which has agreed to provide IT and Internet training workshops to the tenants.
Working together the various parties hope to help close the digital divide within this part of Solihull.
Contact a memeber of the CI-Net team for more information