2nd December 2021

Ultrafast Broadband for Bentworth

No Comments

[Please note that this is deemed to be in the interest of the village and does not necessarily reflect parish council policy].

At the moment most people have an  FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) internet connection. This service connects a cabinet, within the village, to your house by copper cables, the same cables which have been in place for years. The cabinet is connected to the internet via a fibre optic cable. The weakness of this system is the copper cable from the cabinet to your house and your internet speed relies on the distance to the cabinet and the quality of your cable. The cabinet for nearly all of us is behind the post box on the village green.

The proposed upgrade to FTTP (Fibre To The Premises ) involves extending the fibre optic cable into your house. This will eliminate the speed loss caused by the distance from the cabinet and, as this is a new cable, any old cable faults.

This will be the solution for every house in the long term but moving to this service as a village now will put us ahead of the game. You would see much higher internet speed options and more reliability.

Even if you feel you already get a decent speed and don’t feel the need for faster internet now, things change and people’s requirements are nearly always increasing. An upgrade would be future proof and almost certainly make your property more saleable.

Dan Steel sent an email to you a year ago, asking who would be interested in upgrading to ultrafast broadband, also known as fibre to the premises (FTTP).  We had 70 replies, which enabled us to start enquiries with BT Openreach (BTOR).  We selected BTOR as they are the only firm that would allow us to keep our existing internet service provider – all the others would require us to switch contracts.

BTOR have now come back with a quote for the installation.  It’s a large sum of money, but the good news is that we can apply for grants from the Government and from Hampshire County Council that would cover the costs, as long as enough people sign up. We therefore need you to confirm your participation in the scheme, even if you didn’t reply last year.

For this to be achievable, you must make a binding commitment to upgrade your broadband when the infrastructure is in place, most likely in the second half of next year.  The cost of doing this will depend on your service provider, the line speed you want, and whether there are any special deals available at the time.  As a guide, current prices range from around £35pm for 150Mbps up to £65pm for 900Mpbs.

If you are willing to make this commitment, please contact Dan Steel (largecatsdan@gmail.com) and Tim Lipscombe (timlipscombe@gmail.com) with your name, address, postcode and home telephone number.  Please do so as soon as possible as the grants are only available for a very limited time.

The attached file has more details about the upgrade plus answers to a few questions that have been raised.  If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact Dan or Tim.


Downloads

There are no comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.