For homes and businesses with fibre
Anchor an island
Have a gigabit fibre connection? It can carry a whole neighbourhood onto the network, and it matters most where our rooftops cannot see. Here is exactly what that asks of you, and what it does not.
What an island is
A neighbourhood joined by tunnel, until radio gets there
Most of the network is radio: rooftops that can see each other. Some neighbourhoods are too far from any rooftop we can reach, for now. An island joins them anyway.
A small router at your place carries the neighbourhood's traffic to our core over an encrypted tunnel, and homes nearby join the island by radio, from your roof or a neighbour's. They get the same addresses, the same service and the same promises about their traffic as anyone else on the network.
When radio does reach the island, the tunnel is not thrown away. It becomes the island's second way home.
Where you are matters most
An anchor is worth most where nothing else reaches: the suburbs, the far side of a hill, a street in a valley. If you can see one of our rooftops, radio will get to you anyway. If you cannot, you may be exactly who we need.
And your upload
An island's traffic goes up your connection as well as down it. Symmetric gigabit fibre is ideal; a connection with a thin upload is not a good anchor, and we will say so.
What it asks of you
Small, and all of it in writing
One isolated port
A port or VLAN of its own that reaches the internet and nothing else of yours. No route to your devices, no access to anything inside, and no trust between the two.
Outbound only
The island starts one encrypted connection out to us. Nothing comes in: no ports forwarded, no inbound connections, no public address of yours used for anything.
Power and a shelf
Room for a small router near your own, and, if your roof can see the neighbourhood, a spot for an antenna on a non-penetrating mount.
What it does not ask
None of our traffic leaves under your address
Everything an island carries goes through the tunnel whole, to our core, and out of our own address space. An abuse complaint, a copyright notice or a fraud score lands on our addresses and reaches us, because they are ours. Your connection's addresses appear nowhere in it.
And we cap ourselves: a rate limit set on the tunnel, low enough that your own service is never the thing that suffers, and lowered whenever you ask, without a discussion.
What is genuinely yours to weigh. The traffic crosses your circuit, so the volume is real even though the exposure is not. Some providers' residential terms say something about this, and we will read yours with you before you decide.
The island also depends on you: when your connection is down, so is the neighbourhood's, and everyone on the island is told that plainly before they join.
Talk to us first
Tell us where you are, who your provider is and what it gives you up and down, and whether a router could have a port of its own. We will tell you honestly whether you would make a good anchor, and what it would take.