Drive into the remote English village of Wray and the picturesque countryside could lead you to fear for your internet connection. But the tiny community enjoys some of the fastest broadband speeds in the UK. 

In the local pub, tourists visiting the rural Lancashire spot say they're impressed by how quickly it is to get online. Indeed, some of the best connections in the region aren't in cities – Wray has hyperfast internet speed because it's connected to a local provider called Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN).

Areas that have B4RN coverage are usually indicated by hand-sized red plastic spades, like a seal of approval. The one in Wray hangs next to the door outside its town hall, which has also started offering computer lessons to locals. 

Launched in Melling in 2011, B4RN provides a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network to rural areas in the north of England, meaning the fiber-optic cable runs from the internet service provider (ISP) directly to a user's home, whereas most major internet services provide fiber-to-the-cabinet. To date, B4RN has connected more than 5,000 properties, no matter how remote. 

"Villages and towns up here are very much part of the forgotten 5 percent," says Mark Gray, B4RN's media officer. "Those initial villages and towns, the changes it made to their lives, quickly caught on to neighboring villages down the road and the network started growing organically from there."

Indeed, the backbone of B4RN is the volunteers who raise funds, agree wayleaves with landowners to allow free access rights to dig ducts, and build the network. B4RN is registered as a non-profit "community-benefit society," meaning it's owned by its members, many of whom are customers and help build the network. According to its website, local communities have invested more than £5 million ($6.1 million) in it.

It is the trust formed between communities and landowners that allows B4RN to keep costs low and access land to install fiber-optic cables directly to people's homes. This is how B4RN can provide speeds of 1,000 megabits per second – or one gigabit – at an affordable price of £30 per month. In comparison, the UK's average internet download speed is 54.2 megabits per second.  

Faster than London

Gavin Keeble, a business owner in Garsdale, Cumbria, says B4RN has allowed him to run his international company just as successfully as rivals in London, and that he has a faster connection than that in many parts of the capital. "B4RN is far superior and you're in the middle of the sticks," he says. 

"Currently, people up here and other rural areas have to either get satellite broadband or microwave-linked broadbands, which are both non-physical. So, therefore, they get interrupted quite a lot and are not that reliable."

Because B4RN's fiber network cables are underground in trenches, come rain or shine, locals benefit from a truly future-proof connectivity for years to come. 

In an increasingly internet age, a digital divide can reproduce or exacerbate social inequalities. While internet usage is growing in the UK, 5.3 million adults still don't have access, according to the country's Office for National Statistics 2018 data.

B4RN isn't really a story about technological innovation, but about how people get together to empower themselves and create positive impacts on their communities – especially social – such as an isolated grandmother being able to catch up with her grandchildren via Skype, or a disabled home-bound teen finding friends online.