Category: Broadband

The act of being the first is a significant milestone for each BDUK project, as it helps to show to those waiting and hoping to benefit that the project has really moved from planning to the build phase.

Broadband projects are not just for Christmas, and the Fibre Garden project has been three years in the making but has reached a memorandum of understanding with a supplier to build and deliver the network, and the share offer to fund the project is nearing its closure date.

The pace of the BDUK roll-outs is building and the DCMS has dubbed Wednesday 18th December Super Switch on Day as it sees cabinets serving some 5,000 premises go live.

The coverage of the first live cabinet in the Kent roll-out is interesting, as from the comments it sounds like area has very slow speeds, but our speed test shows people getting 6 to 12 Mbps in the village.

While many complain about the BT monopoly on rural broadband, there are some who are doing their little bit to change that, and ceaseless campaigning by two individuals in Lincolnshire means two villages are now able to order a Virgin Media cable service.

One of the last councils has now signed its BDUK contract, though perhaps it should be called an ERDF contract if named based on the size of the funding going into the project.

While it is unlikely that any of those reading this will get a chance to pose with a US President or a Danish Prime Minister if you can post a picture or video clip of why you should get a FTTH connection then you might win a next gen console or iPad.

The 44 cabinets delivered via the programme in Suffolk in theory service some 10,000 premises and mean the project is clearly underway and just a case of building on this initial roll-out.

We covered the problems that Selling, Kent was having with its FTTH project and the remaining 13 people using the service are set to see it turn off in May 2014.

On the one hand we are bombarded by headlines of slow speeds in the UK and the assumption is that we are a long way behind the rest of the world, but internationally sourced data does not always support the attention grabbing headlines.