Better broadband
for rural Cumbria

Is your home or business located in rural Cumbria and if so, are you suffering with almost unusably slow internet speeds? There is a solution - and one that's available pretty much anywhere, pretty much immediately.

Discover how to get the best alternative broadband service for rural Cumbria from the UK's leading specialist Internet Service Provider.

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Fast broadband in rural Cumbria

You can get much better broadband
but you'll need to find the right provider

In the picturesque Cumbrian landscape where rolling hills meet serene lakes, a modern-day challenge persists for many homes and businesses - poor broadband. While the region is quite rightly renowned for its natural beauty, far too many more rurally located Cumbrian communities have been left struggling with simply inadequate internet connectivity.

We explain why far too many properties in rural Cumbria have such slow broadband and also highlight the ideal alternative connectivity solution. It's both cost-effective and immediately available, but for the best outcome, you'll need to contact a specialist Internet Service Provider.

The challenges of poor rural broadband in Cumbria

The so-called Digital Divide exacerbates already existing disparities between urban and rural communities, impacting various aspects of life. Amongst many other things, inadequate broadband access directly hampers economic growth and severely limits other positive social outcomes. For example, small Cumbrian businesses with bad broadband will struggle to compete in the digital marketplace which in turn negatively affects employment opportunities.

The situation is equally bad for far too many Cumbrian households, who are all but excluded from taking advantage of the ever-growing swathe of resources online. Nowadays, basic activities such as online shopping, booking a doctor's appointment, taxing a car or even enjoying streamed TV require sufficiently fast and stable broadband - and it's these types of things that those with poor connectivity are prevented from doing.

Exactly how bad is rural Cumbria's broadband?

Ofcom's latest figures show that well over 25,000 homes in the North West of England have no access to a landline broadband service running at very modest speeds of 10Mbps or more, with several thousand business properties additionally affected.

Cumbria's Eden district is the worst area in the entire North West for internet access, with Allerdale, Carlisle and South Lakeland also featuring in the North West's eight most badly connected areas.

Why do rural locations have such slow broadband?

There are two key factors that lead to internet connectivity being so poor in rural Cumbria.

Firstly, the county's rugged terrain presents significant challenges to infrastructure deployment, making it both time- and cost-prohibitive for traditional internet service providers (ISPs) to extend landline networks to cover more remote areas.

Additionally, the low population density of more rural areas further diminishes the economic incentive for ISPs to invest in broadband infrastructure, which again leaves many rural communities entirely ignored when it comes to having their connectivity improved.

Are rural Cumbria's slow broadband issues likely to be resolved any time soon by traditional landline technology?

No - and there's a brutally simple reason why not. The vast majority of the UK gets its broadband via a partial fibre service (known as Fibre To The Cabinet or FTTC). This means that there is very fast fibreoptic cable coming from the local exchange into the green street cabinet serving a property. However, then there's a run of much slower copper wire between the cabinet and property, which also carries the landline telephone service for that property.

An image showing how fibre to the cabinet broadband works

If a property is relatively near to the fibre-enabled cabinet serving it (say up to 1,000 metres max), it should be able to get broadband speeds around 50Mbps. However, connectivity performance problems occur when properties are more than 1km away from that street cabinet, because then broadband performance quickly starts to degrade over that long run of copper wire and will soon slow down to near unusable levels.

The only way to fix this with traditional landline broadband is to put in a new fibre-enabled cabinet much closer to affected properties - but as this would cost many tens of thousands of pounds, the likes of Openreach simply aren't going to bother if doing so is just going to fix the broadband problems for a handful of properties.

And this is the root cause of the so-called Digital Divide, which according to Ofcom still so negatively affects well over 400,000 homes and businesses scattered all over the UK.

But there is an immediate solution to providing rural Cumbria with much better broadband

Fortunately, an ideal way to get better broadband to connectivity-starved properties in rural Cumbria already exists. It's very cost-effective and best of all, it can be provisioned pretty much anywhere within just a week or two. And that's broadband delivered over 4G.

What is 4G broadband? And why is it the ideal connectivity solution for rural areas?

4G broadband uses frequencies employed by mobile networks to transmit data via phone masts. Although more usually associated with smartphones for on-the-go internet access, with the right equipment, 4G can also be used to provide good broadband to a single fixed location such as a home or a business. Because 4G coverage is now so extensive, properties can be supplied with speedy and dependable broadband virtually anywhere and almost instantly, no matter where they are.

Our 4G Broadband Plans

Why we at National Broadband are so good at what we do

First off, we are partnered with all four of the UK's mobile network operators. This means we're able to select the network with the strongest 4G coverage at your specific location. And if the network we first choose runs into any unforeseen issues, we'll simply and seamlessly switch you across to another one, with no need for you to cancel one contract and sign up to a new one.

What's more, even if available 4G signals at your particular location are weak or flaky, we can still deliver great results. That's because when necessary, we'll supply and install a small but highly effective outdoor 4G antenna. These high-gain devices significantly enhance signal reception, which lets us provide properties with a speedy and stable broadband service over 4G even in areas with distinctly poor coverage, where smartphones may show little or 4G signal at all.

An engineer installing an antenna on a building

Learn more about our 4G antenna, our installation service and the other equipment we supply to deliver the best broadband service possible in more rural and remote areas.

Our promise to you

At National Broadband, we've got well over 20 years of experience in using alternative technology to bring life-changingly improved broadband to the digitally deprived. This gives us a great deal of confidence in what we can achieve for our customers.

But perhaps this sounds all too good to be true and you're not sure if our 4G broadband will work for you? Or maybe you've already been let down by empty promises from other suppliers? Well, this is again where we're different, because we are fully prepared to put our money where our mouth is with our no quibble Money Back Guarantee.

Try us out for 14 days, and if we don't manage to provide you with the broadband speeds you've been longing for, just let us know and we'll give you a complete refund.

Take a look at how we saved one Cumbrian household in Winskill from an internet nightmare. As the Massey family now knows, there's simply no need to be suffering in Cumbria with bad broadband. So get in touch today and find out what we can do for you.

Why wait? You've got literally nothing to lose... but a whole online world to gain.

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