What's the MK BAG campaign?

Milton Keynes Broadband Action Group (MK BAG) is a 1,200+ strong community group representing individual residents and businesses from around Milton Keynes that are campaigning for faster broadband, a coherent digital infrastructure strategy and the economic benefits that such a solution brings. Join the campaign at www.mkbag.org

How we operate, and who for:

• MK BAG campaigns for anyone in the 01908 dialling code area.
• We are technology agnostic – broadband, cable or wireless, so long as it delivers our goals.
• We will be pragmatic in our approach. Mindful of commercial realities and working within those ‘real world’ constraints.
• It is a functionally based campaign (i.e. we want our average MK family of 4 to be able to concurrently use internet applications without undue slow down and constraint. Alongside this, we make recommendations as to what the use cases and minimum speeds to support them should be).
• We will use a variety of methods of campaigning and publicity to achieve our aims.
• We will assist MK Council in its goals of bringing faster broadband to MK, by acting as a conduit for campaigning and where practicable to handle the basic admin and day-to-day queries of MKC around broadband (think “how do I get fibre” or “I can only get DSL but my speed is just 512k with dropouts, help…”)
  

What are our operational goals?

• To raise awareness of why better broadband is needed in MK
• To eliminate broadband "not spots" that still remain
• To maximise the speed of broadband/internet access in MK
• To keep MK at the forefront of economic development in the region

Multi-agency relationships

We work with as many interested parties and agencies as we can to increase our success.  Some of the groups we work with include:

• Milton Keynes Council
• MKSM
• Milton Keynes Citizen newspaper
• BT Openreach
• Virgin Media
• ...and of course our many members!

Our previous campaign successes

• BT long reach trial
  • BT used to limit broadband availability to properties 3.5km or less from the exchange.  Due to our close relationship with BT, they ran a trial just with our members to extend that to 6.5km.  As a result of our feedback and success, this was rolled out nationally - hence why 98% broadband availability is possible now across the UK.
• ntl:'s wireless trial
  • ntl: approached us and 70 of our members to be triallists of a new wireless broadband solution.  Ultimately it would have provided 10Mbps symmetric DSL.  While technically the trial was a success and the feedback from MK BAG members invaluable, ntl: went bankrupt which ended the project.
• FTTP Bradwell Abbey trial
  • As MK has been such a fertile ground for testing new technologies, thanks to the tireless campaigning of MK BAG and our members, BT Openreach decided to make MK one of two greenfield FTTP ("Fibre To The Premises") trial areas in the UK.  This trial is currently underway.