3-C (Calder Connect Co-operative) gets backing of Hebden Royd Council and founding member of Freeserve

The local broadband Internet Service Provider initiative has now been officially and legally constituted as a co-operative. Calder Connect Cooperative will be generally known as 3-C

3-C's non-profit status makes it eligible to apply for major funding awards. On Wednesday 23rd July Hebden Royd Town Council provided £600 seed funding to help cover the legal incorporation of the project.

Rob Wilmot founding member of Freeserve joined the management committee of 3-C giving a very supportive boost to the initiative. Mr Wilmot said he believed the local project could be as groundbreaking as Freeserve itself. He described 3-C as "having the potential to be one of the most innovative schemes in the country".

Mr Wilmot has already been discussing the project with senior staff at the regional funding agency, Yorkshire Forward. He said "They are very interested in what we are doing."

At a meeting at the Good Shepherd on Tuesday 22nd July speakers Mark Harrison (Acting Chairman of 3-C) and Chris Ratcliffe (Management Committee member of 3-C and webmaster for the Hebweb) explained what we had to do to get broadband to the Calder Valley Exchange, the need for people to register their interest online, lobby their MP's and generally explained how the successful campaign to get Hebden Bridge broadband enabled had worked.

Although Hebden Bridge will be getting broadband at the end of September, the Calder Valley exchange still has not reached it's unreasonably high trigger level of 500. Almost half of the current 150 members of 3-C represent the Mytholmroyd, Luddenden Foot and Cragg Vale area.

More info:

• Hebden Bridge Web broadband
• Mytholmroyd Net broadband

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