How Do You Get a House in a Steep Valley Forest Online? With a Drone

In the remote village of Pontfadog, Wales, getting a respectable data connection hasn’t been straightforward.

While the Internet infrastructure firm Openreach had managed to lay one-gigabit-per-second fiber to many homes in the area, it was left at a loss when it came to connecting 20 houses on the side of the steep, forested valley overlooking the village. As Silicon points out, it couldn’t get the right equipment to the location to dig trenches, and the forest canopy meant that wireless connections weren’t an option.

So how, exactly, did the company decide to get the fiber cable up the valley side and to the houses? “We figured the best option was to fly it in over the top of the tree canopy and then lift it up to make sure it was clear of the tree line,” explains Openreach’s chief engineer, Andy Whale, to the BBC.