The first FTTP (fibre to the property) Openreach project in the village is now up and running. About 25 properties on the top of Doctor’s Hill are now able to benefit from almost infinite fibre broadband speeds! The infrastructure has been built by Openreach and a broadband service can be taken from any company that provides FTTP in our area. A similar FTTP scheme for lower Doctor’s Hill and the neighbouring part of Newtown Road is now being built, but Openreach has not yet given a completion date. These are both Community Fibre Partnerships, contracted through Openreach by groups of local residents. Openreach quotes were around £1,000 per property which has been covered by the government ‘Rural Gigabit’ voucher scheme; there was no cost to local residents for the infrastructure. Please do note that for eligible residents to benefit from a FTTP service you will have to request to update your current service and may have to change supplier.
Excited by our success on the above two projects we have been trying to set up similar small, manageable projects around the village. However, despite several projects being put forwards in the last 4 months, the quotes and suggested schemes coming back from Openreach have been much less favourable with too many properties included at too high a cost; £1,800 - £3,000 per property with large numbers of properties drawn into the schemes that were not actually submitted. Thus with quotes @£70,000 - £100,000 rather than £20,000 ish no further schemes currently look viable, but some coordinators are still negotiating….especially as the new FTTP infrastructure is about to be built right past their properties anyway….
Any queries then please email me on broadband@sherfieldenglish.org.uk
Best wishes, Ursula
(with congratulations to Eric and his team for successful project completion, John and Sarah for their project in hand, Kevin, Bryan, Jon, Emad, David & supporters for their work towards achieving improved connectivity for our communities….)
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