Wiltshire village risks missing out on ultrafast broadband
Openreach is urging people in Seend to get behind a bid to bring ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband to local homes and businesses.
The company is warning that the community risks missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime Full Fibre upgrade if they don’t apply for free Government broadband vouchers, which can be used to secure faster speeds and greater reliability.
The scheme is just 15 vouchers short of being able to proceed - so more people need to sign up to make sure the village joins the more than 80,000 homes and businesses across Wiltshire who already have access to full fibre broadband.
Funding through the Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the deployment of new broadband signal boosting technology – which can extend the reach of the Full Fibre network, means thousands more remote rural communities like Seend are now within reach of the ultrafast technology.
Openreach has identified the village as being within scope for Full Fibre and is urging local people to take the next step by applying for and pooling together free Government Gigabit Vouchers to help fund the build.
Residents can check if they qualify and pledge their voucher on the Connect My Community website. Using the vouchers – which don’t cost residents anything - enables Openreach to work with a local community to build a customised, co-funded network. The vouchers can be combined to extend the ultrafast, ultra-reliable network to premises in outlying rural areas which won’t be covered by private investment.
Martin Williams, Openreach’s partnership director for the West, said: “This is a really exciting opportunity for the people of Seend a to bring all the benefits of ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband to their community. We’ve had a great response so far but we still need 15 more to sign up and pledge their voucher so the scheme can go ahead.
“Our Fibre Community Partnership programme has meant that we’ve been able to potentially bring hundreds more communities across the UK, into our Full Fibre build plans. But building out the network to these harder to reach locations is still challenging – which is why its only possible with everyone working together – you, your neighbours and Openreach.
“Everyone who pledges a voucher will be doing their bit to help make Seend 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.”
Once the pledge target for the scheme is reached, residents need to ensure they then validate their vouchers with the Government so that Openreach can confirm that building work can get underway. 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.
