Village gets huge technology boost

As of next week, the village of Drumsurn with a population of just over 357 in the last census, will boast superior technology to almost any other place anywhere in Ireland.

The only places which have the same capability as the small village are Dublin, the Titanic quarter in Belfast and a small trial involving only a few households. North West Electronics Wireless Networks are upgrading existing networks and hope to have their first customers up and running next week.

Over the course of the next month, the remote village will become fully connected. The new 100mb system will not require people to rent a phoneline, unlike the majority of households in towns such as Londonderry.

Scott McClelland, NWE’s group managing director said: "This is available in Dublin, and Drumsurn. It wouldn't really be accurate to say that those are the only two places because they did do a small trial in Belfast with a few apartments and I think they were looking at it for the Titanic quarter as well.

"This is as fast as anywhere in Ireland. We have been operating in Drumsurn for a number of years now. We are upgrading the older equipment. This is up to two and a half times faster than BT’s superfast Broadband."

Scott McClelland explained how fast the new system actually is: "We have the capability to sustain faster speeds than the internet can actually offer. This is too fast for the internet itself. What I mean by that is that almost all the big companies coming from America, the likes of Youtube, Apple, Google, Microsoft and those companies in Silicon Valley, it all goes through the same 'pipe' as it were.

"That means that the internet itself is not actually fast enough to maximise the technology and the capability we will be offering in Drumsurn, starting next week. That is what Project Kelvin is all about, trying to boost that. There is a lot of debate going on in Europe about that at the minute, about the limitations caused by that. We are the first connected to Project Kelvin."