Broadband boost for Seaton Sluice as new technology arrives ultrafast
The first homes and businesses in the seaside village of Seaton Sluice can now access ultra-reliable full fibre broadband, just months after Openreach asked the community to join their Fibre Community Partnership (FCP) programme
Back in April the company encouraged people living and working in Seaton Sluice to apply for free Government broadband vouchers, which can be used to help secure faster broadband speeds and greater reliability.
Using the vouchers – which don’t cost residents anything, enabled Openreach to work with the local community to build a customised, co-funded network.
Louise Thompson, Openreach’s Regional Engagement manager, said: “Our complex engineering teams have worked so hard to bring this new technology to Seaton Sluice – it usually takes around 12-18 months from a Fibre Community Partnership Programme being agreed to the first premises ‘going live’ but this has been turned round in less than six months which is a huge achievement. We expect the remaining homes and businesses to be able to place orders before Christmas.
“Everyone who pledged a voucher has done their bit to help make Seaton Sluice one of the best-connected places in the UK.”
“We’re investing £15 billion to build full fibre broadband to 25 million homes – and more than six million of those will be in the toughest third of the UK – but we can’t upgrade the whole country alone. This latest support from government is a vital part of that process.”
Funding through the Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the deployment of new innovative engineering techniques, means thousands more remote, rural and coastal communities like Seaton Sluice are now within reach of the ultrafast technology.
As part of the funding conditions residents are asked to commit to ordering a full fibre service from a provider of their choice for at least 12 months once the new network is available and confirm that they are connected.
Full fibre technology provides more reliable, resilient and future-proof connectivity; meaning fewer faults; more predictable, consistent speeds and enough capacity to easily meet growing data demands. It's also future-proof, which means it will serve generations to come and won’t need to be upgraded for decades.
Fibre optics - strands of glass around one-tenth the thickness of a human hair - transmit data using light signals. Fibre is smaller, lighter and more durable than copper cabling and less vulnerable to damage. This short video explains what full fibre technology is and there’s more info here.
