| This event was the launch of our Better Business Broadband campaign for the business parks of Burgess Hill. The photos don’t do justice to the turnout, with the many conversations I had with everyone, I nearly forgot to get the camera out! Many thanks again to Mark Collins and his team from the Oak Barn and Bruce Whalley from the Burgess Hill Golf Centre. |
| We started the event at 5.00pm on the driving range next to the Oak Barn. We were given some free coaching from Bruce Whalley, the PGA professional who runs the Burgess Hill Golf Centre. I’ve never been here before, and I was impressed with the views out to a lovely nine hole course behind the range. The automated ball dispensers filled the buckets we were given. Bruce gave us some pointers on positioning our hands, our swing and we got started on the automated tees. After you’ve hit the ball these deliver a fresh ball on top of a tee ready for your next shot. As a complete novice I found some great satisfaction with about half a dozen swings that connected properly with the club. Others in the group had brought their own clubs, we were all chatting between swings. We then joined the others who had arrived for the main event in the very convivial surroundings of the Oak Barn.   |
| Here’s new member Mark Jackson of Sussex Facilities Management enjoying a moment chatting with Jason Stoner from Comply Sense. The latter will be providing the Fire Warden’s Training courses we have arranged with Chichester College Group. The courses use VR headsets to recreate virtual fire emergency scenarios that trainees have to negotiate. We are awaiting news on where we can hold them locally.  |
| There then followed a very enlightening presentation on business broadband from Frank Egleton of MCL Telecom. They have recently installed Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) at this busy site which is itself home to two businesses; the restaurant and the golf centre. That means they’re running a large number of connected tools, such as payment terminals, telephones, web access and more.  |
| Frank gave us a live demonstration of that speed comparing the restaurant connection to the soon-to-be-connected golf centre. The new equipment was delivering a speed some 50x faster than the legacy system. MCL Telecom are independent of both the large telecoms service providers and equipment manufacturers and can give you the very best options to suit your needs, whether that is speed of implementation, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or other. |
| This meeting was also a great opportunity for two of the companies at the forefront of helping us deliver our Campaign for Better Business Broadband. After his presentation, Frank Egleton (far right) from MCL Telecom met with two representatives from Fastnet which is a fully fledged ISP, they are also members of BHBPA.  We can expect some great collaboration from these two companies. |