BROADBAND UPGRADE
Dear Householder
You may have seen posters in the village highlighting a community led project to upgrade the internet speed to Helpringham and Swaton by installing full Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband. FTTP is the future of broadband, delivered using a fibre-optic cable link all the way from homes and businesses from the local exchange. The key question for rural communities is, “Will FTTP eventually come if we wait, or should we do something”?
We have been working on this project for some time and, at last, we are at the final stage of approval for the first phase. This covers some 292 properties in our villages and for the final stage to get across the line WE NOW NEED YOUR HELP. The project is funded in part by the Government and in part by Open Reach meaning there is nothing for us to pay, which is obviously great news, but to get them to make this investment they need to know that enough of us will take out a high speed internet contract for a minimum of 12 months once it is installed.
Why do we need FTTP when we have FTTC?
The downside of Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) is that it still relies on the copper cables from the cabinet to each house so the further your house is from the cabinet the lower the available broadband speeds. It is also limited to maximum broadband speeds of 80Mbps (for the houses within 100m of the cabinet) which is pretty fast but, as an example, the higher definition 4K televisions require 25Mbps broadband speeds per television (Netflix recommendation) so it’s quite easy to see that demand for high broadband speeds will continue. As we all use the internet more and more, it slows the internet speeds for everyone on the same cabinet.
Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) is, in effect, future proofing our broadband connection as this system can deliver up to 1Gbps broadband speeds, 12 time faster than the best FTTC speed and it doesn’t matter where your house is in the village. It’s unlikely that you’d need anywhere near this speed now, so with FTTP you choose the download speed you want and typical unlimited data packages start at 100Mbps for £25 per month but will vary with provider. Another benefit is that houses with FTTP have seen an up-lift in value by 3 to 5%.
What will FTTP cost to install to our villages and homes?
Nothing other than a small amount of your time and commitment to sign up for FTTP for a minimum of 12 months when installed. Providing we can get sufficient numbers of households that are willing to apply for a Government voucher, we can cover the full cost of installation. We are in your hands at this point. If we don’t get enough people showing an interest and signing up for a voucher, this project can’t go ahead.
You can register your interest in one of two ways:
Provide the information required and commitment to us directly via the below email address, or to one of our representatives who will be visiting residents over the next few weeks and we will upload it directly into the OpenReach Portal. You will then receive an email from the government asking you to confirm this commitment so please look out for this email and follow the instructions.
Information required per household – Address, Contact Name, email address, Mobile number, Business or residential account, a statement saying you will commit to taking a 12 month contract. (This is not a legally binding contract at this stage)
Wait for the project to launch and log onto the OpenReach Portal and make the commitment there.
THE DEADLINE FOR THIS COMMITMENT IS THE 6TH OCTOBER 2022
Once we get sufficient commitments, phase one of the project will go ahead and we can immediately launch phase 2 to cover the rest of the homes missed from Phase 1 by OpenReach.
Please feel free to send us an email with your commitment or any questions to helpringhamswatonbroadband@gmail.com
Your personal information will not be shared and will only be used by project leaders to communicate your commitment to OpenReach.
6 Sep 22