After a campaign that has lasted for many years, with appeals to the House of Lords, protestations to our local MP and much wrangling over funding with Wiltshire Council, it appears that super-fast Broadband will now finally be available to all residents in Compton Bassett from this month, with most of the infrastructure costs being met by the Local Authority, except for a small section funded by Central Government.
It is worth noting that there are still many villages, such as Bowerchalke in Wiltshire, that have had to fund their own services or do without super-fast broadband. Whilst it has taken some time to achieve coverage here, our small village has been fortunate to be included in the county's roll-out plans which are decided on geography, planning requirements and the location of the existing telecoms infrastructure. These factors have dictated the order of the roll-out and, according to Wiltshire Council, this approach will apparently ensure the best value for money for the tax payers of Wiltshire. With just over 200 residents, villages of our size have to make a very strong case to be prioritized, which has been done and now eventually achieved the desired effect.
So now both BT Openreach and Gigaclear should have written to all residents offering a package which allows them to connect to super-fast Broadband at various price levels for differing service levels. Gigaclear tell us the main cabinet has just been activated so connections should be ready. Residents can check to see if their service is ready via the postcode checker on www.qiqaclear.com . Those who registered previously should already have been contacted by their Sales teams.
Nevertheless, there have been teething problems and some of the technology provided by Gigaclear appears to have failed in the initial stages of connectivity. This is not satisfactory, although there were similar problems when BT first initiated their service some 18 months ago.
Councillor Julian Barlow
There have been already several unsuccessful installations to users served by the Quemerford exchange but we have been informed that one has now been successfully connected and is recieving approx 200Mbit/second.
BT have apologised for any negative aspects of their implementation and offered a complex series of factors which affected timelines and service. Including congestion on the telegraph poles, a systems re-boot being required and issues of access to existing cable trunking. They maintain they are working to resolve issues.
For those who are hopeful to be connected soon it is worth reminding that the connection requires the right type of account to recieve the service and is not just an automatic update. Most of the major Internet Service Providers are capable of supplying the service so do please check that you are scheduled for the right kind of account.
BT said, "With a Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) solution, the engineering work (civil and telecoms) pretty much stops at the DSLAM (green cabinet in the street). With a Fibre To The Premise (FTTP) solution, the engineering work (civils and telecoms) goes right into the premise as it requires a replacement of the cables all the way from the exchange into the property. The FTTP network in Compton Bassett has been designed and deployed to pick up the premises that have been defined under the contract with Wiltshire Council. This network is not deployed to each premises but deployed to distribution points (CBTs) within the community. These CBTs are located so that the retail activity (whenever the resident raises an order with their chosen Internet service provider or ISP) can be undertaken relatively easily. The retail journey should not involve high levels of engineering activity to complete the connectivity.
The issues we have seen within Compton Bassett can mainly be related to the following:
The roll out programme for Super-Fast Broadband continues apace in the section of the village serviced by Calne exchange. Some have already gained connectivity, others are waiting. However, the process of dealing with BT has not been pain free for a number of residents and we asked BT Open Reach for clarification on the problems that people have encountered.
For those villagers living in the section of the village serviced by Hilmarton Exchange their progress towards achieving SFBB is more complicated. This portion of the village comes under phase three of the Wiltshire Council roll out plan and will take longer to achieve. It is not under the jurisdiction of BT and has been allocated to a provider called Gigaclear who are charged with the roll out of broadband for sections of rural Wiltshire. We have spoken to the Director at Wiltshire Council responsible for broadband, Dr Carlton Brand and we have also contacted the Development Manager at Gigaclear to establish likely timelines for the installation.