Faster broadband...? ACTION REQUIRED THIS WEEK

Hampshire Superfast Broadband Initiative – YOUR Support Required by Friday 14th August

Hello

I’m Justine Lago, a Warnford resident of some 2 ½ years and I have agreed to be the community liaison to explore this exciting initiative to see if we can benefit.

The Background

Around 5% of the UK isn’t covered in existing national fibre broadband rollout plans and we believe that Warnford falls into that group. Whilst we do have fibre connection to the green cabinet at the bottom of Hayden Lane, many homes in the area cannot benefit because of the infrastructure (copper wires) and distance from the box to our homes. We’re not content with that, so want to work in partnership with Openreach to get superfast broadband to our homes / our community. We’ve set up this project to access the additional funds that Hampshire has set aside to support rural communities to upgrade their broadband. Funding for the Hampshire Top Up to the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme is allocated on a first come first served basis (and is up to £3000 per private household, double that of the standard) , so we’d like to start moving with exploring this as quickly as possible so that we can raise enough money to install a gigabit – capable connection for the village to supply all of our homes. Openreach will fund a large chunk of the cost and we need to raise monies to cover the remainder.

We need superfast broadband to support the increasing number of internet-capable devices in the home as well as local businesses and people working from home

As many of you will know, conventional broadband services can be unreliable ADSL broadband is carried along copper cables all the way from the exchange to homes and business premises. The signal suffers a reduction in strength as it travels along the copper cable, reducing the speeds that can be delivered. This is the challenge many homes have in Warnford.

In contrast, high-speed fibre broadband utilises fibre-optic cables and do not suffer any significant signal reduction. As a result, superfast broadband services deliver significantly higher speeds and reliability.

To qualify residents must live in a rural area, be unable to get broadband speeds of 100 Mbps and apply as a group. Not everyone within the community needs to apply – the aim is for there to be enough interest to cover the installation costs so that the infrastructure can be built and made available for all.

So what do we need from you?

We need your expressions of interest so that we can apply for the scheme and a quote from Open Reach as a community. There are already 15 households who have signed up, but we’d like to include a few more if others are interested.

You are under no obligation to participate and do not need to contribute any money personally at present, we just need to understand the appetite within the community for this fantastic initiative, which will hopefully help us all.

As time is of the essence, I’d be grateful if you could contact me at justine@onionhr.co.uk as soon as possible (and before end of play Friday 14th August) with your expressions of interest in exploring this further.

For each household I will need your name, your postcode and house name / number. Those who have already contact me do not need to do so again.

I will then of course keep you all updated as to the progress I make with Open Reach and any next steps and decisions that we need to make as a community.

For more information about the scheme: www.hampshiresuperfastbroadband.conm/top-up

If you have any questions, please do email me or call my mobile on 07979868007. Until I start to communicate with Open Reach I can’t give too much detail as my knowledge is limited to the information I have gleaned from the internet but as soon as I know more I will of course pass it on.

Let’s hope it’s a great opportunity for us all.

Justine