Broadband update - 7th Jan 2021

Openreach are going ahead with a fast fibre broadband project for the village.

They needed 24 people to sign up for the scheme through this website:

https://www.openreach.com/connectmycommunity

and, by early January, 37 people had signed up.

The project is being funded using the Government’s Gigabit Broadband

Voucher Scheme which gives £1,500 for each property. Those who sign up

pledge their (free) vouchers and commit to sign a 12 month contract for full

fibre broadband, when the project is complete, with one of the 16 available

Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These include BT, TalkTalk, Vodafone,

Zen and Sky.

In order to find out the price of full fibre broadband, Openreach suggest using

the postcode MK18 2HY to get a quote. It's a competitive market, so full fibre

should not cost much more than our existing slow broadband.

If anyone else in the village wants a full fibre connection when the project is

complete, they should sign up as soon as possible through the website

mentioned above (which at the time of writing is still accepting pledges).

Openreach need to complete the project by October 2021 in order for the

Government to pay out on the pledged vouchers. They surveyed the village

in late November / early December. Stuart Totterdell talked to an Openreach

surveyor in the village at that time and was told that the fibre installation could

be completed by the end of January 2021. I have tried to contact Openreach

to get confirmation of the completion date, but so far I have not heard back

from them.

Fast-ish broadband with a 4G Router using the mobile phone network

remains a viable option for the village, but the new Openreach fibre

broadband installation with its choice of ISPs is especially attractive and

should provide very fast and stable broadband. This feels like a satisfactory

conclusion to our long running quest for decent broadband for WiG.

Please do feel free to contact me if you have any queries and I will try to

answer them.

David Quas

email: phone:

dquas 01275

(at) 843310

yahoo.co.uk