Derbyshire engineer boosts online success of hometown
Eastwood’s Dan Inger wants to raise awareness – as Openreach makes full fibre available to 100,000 Derbyshire premises
People living and working in Brinsley, Eastwood, Heanor, Langley Mill and Underwood, are being urged to check if they can upgrade to full fibre broadband.
Openreach’s full fibre build brings greater reliability and faster speeds, and has now reached more than 20,000 homes and businesses in the local area.
The work is being co-ordinated by Dan Inger, who’s worked for Openreach for more than 20 years, and is a lifelong resident of Eastwood. His teams are working with contractors Map Group to carry out the work.
But with around 10 per cent of premises being early users of the new network, Dan is worried that local people don’t yet know full fibre is available, or perhaps mistakenly think upgrades will happen automatically.
Dan says: “The advantages of full fibre are huge. As well as being faster, it provides more reliable, resilient, and future-proof connectivity, with fewer faults; more predictable, consistent speeds; and enough capacity to use multiple devices at once.
“Full fibre broadband involves running cables from the local exchange on Milnhay Road, to just outside people’s homes and businesses. More than 20,000 premises across Eastwood, Heanor and Langley Mill are already covered in this way, with work continuing to reach the rest.
“We’ve been building the network here for some time now, and I’m proud to be involved in such a great project for my local area. To be putting something back into this community feels good, and I’m looking forward to seeing the new technology make a difference.
“People need to contact their broadband provider to upgrade. It doesn’t happen automatically. But full fibre packages seem to be increasingly competitively priced, for a much-improved service.
“Visit the fibre checker on the Openreach website to check if you’re already covered, or when you might be. And then get in touch with your broadband provider.”
Getting full fibre broadband installed is straightforward. Once somebody places an order with a service provider, an Openreach engineer will visit on an agreed day.
They’ll run a new fibre cable underground or from a nearby pole to a small junction box on the outside wall of your home or business.
A smaller cable then goes through the outside wall to an inside unit - which needs to be near a double electric socket – and before they leave, the engineer will test the connection to make sure it’s up and running.
Openreach has already announced plans to invest in full fibre broadband for hundreds of towns and villages across the East Midlands.
It’s part of the company’s plans to reach 25 million UK homes and businesses by the end of 2026.
This short video explains what full fibre technology is, and you can find out more about the full fibre rollout on the Openreach website.
A recent report by the Centre for Economics & Business Research (Cebr) shows that connecting everyone in the East Midlands to ‘full fibre’ broadband would create a £3.5 billion boost to the local economy, by unlocking smarter ways of working, better public services and greater opportunities for the next generation of home-grown businesses.
