Historical novelist Matt Lewis

Background

Historical novelist, Matthew Lewis, lives in the tiny village of Six Ashes, near Bridgnorth in Shropshire, with his wife Debbie and four children.

The family moved here 11 years ago from Wolverhampton, where they had enjoyed superfast broadband. In Shropshire, they found themselves plunged back into the dark ages that Matthew writes about: “Forsooth, broadbande was slower thann ye olde snailes”.

The challenge

Matthew and Debbie needed robust broadband for business and personal reasons. Their kennels and cattery business required online payments but sluggish broadband speeds meant that people were unable to pay online or use the card machine – many customers had to return a few days later and pay in cash.

“The IT company I worked for at the time were happy for me to work from home, but I couldn’t because access to the internet was so poor.

“Our phones connect to the exchange at Bobbington, the village down the road, and we’re the last-but-one house on an ancient piece of copper.  We had been on BT’s planned list for fibre but Six Ashes was dropped off the planning list, which was really disappointing,” said Matt.

“BT said we could run a community funded scheme but it would cost £20-25,000. A lot of residents here are older people and they weren’t interested in spending a lot of money, so it just wasn’t viable.

“In summer 2017, we had pretty much given up hope of having decent broadband when a guy came down the drive and said he was working with Airband in association with Shropshire Council for filling gaps in rural broadband, and they had identified the corner of our field as an ideal transmitter spot.

“At first I thought it was a joke, I was looking for the hidden cameras!

“We were over the moon! In August 2017 they came back with contracts, and I kept pestering everyone at Airband to ask when the transmitter was going to go up.

“Airband sorted out the planning and we gave them access to the field. They sent out engineers to survey the site, then they set the radio mast up. They kept us informed at every turn, every time a vehicle or engineer was coming. It was a really easy process.”

Results

“Before we had our Airband connection, we had all sorts of problems with our broadband dropping out. Now we’re getting a solid 30Mbps. It has really helped us to be able to process online payments for our business. It has made a big difference to my writing – historical research and uploading photos is a lot easier now. And with four kids in the house who are on Netflix and X-boxes it really has been a lifesaver to have superfast speeds.”

Matthew Lewis is the author of two histories and two historical fiction novels about Richard III and the Wars of the Roses