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