Nuenen is  a small market town in the Netherlands - with fibre optic broadband services passing 100% of its homes and buildings, and with 96% of their inhabitants taking the service.

The technology they used to achieve this feat comes from Hawick in Scotland. While UK plc falls behind in the broadband stakes for the second time, its encouraging to see that UK businesses are  benefitting from their clarity of vision, even if it means focussing on exports while their native market matures.

During the summer of 2005 CBN asked GTC consultant Adrian Wooster to pay Nuenen a visit. This project is a truly remarkable feat with some very novel ideas and approaches to the problems of broadband adoption, deployment of fibre-based services, and community engagement.

This short paper summarises the visit