Everyone in Littlehempston should have received a card in the post recently explaining that Openreach are hoping to deliver fibre broadband to Littlehempston with the aid of the government’s rural gigabit voucher scheme https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/. They want to install Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) which would give you a minimum speed of 30 Mbps (roughly 10 times faster than we currently get). Openreach will receive at least £1,500 from the government towards the cost of the fibre installation for each household that signs up to the scheme (and £3,500 for each business). Here’s a link to an online version of the Openreach card in case you didn’t receive yours.
Fibre broadband would allow us to access online services, make video calls, work from home, stream HD TV and game online – all at the same time. With no frustrating buffering, no connection dropouts, no waiting your turn. Apparently there’s published research showing that faster broadband can increase the value of your house by up to 2%, and the second most asked question when viewing a house to buy or rent is “What is the broadband speed?”.
To achieve that speed, Openreach need to install a fibre optic cable to each household and business in Littlehempston – they can’t just do one or two, here and there, they need to do them all. The money to pay for the installation will come from the government – provided enough of us commit to using fast fibre broadband for at least a year after the installation is completed. So Openreach have set up the Littlehempston Ultrafast Community Project.
Openreach install and maintain the phone and broadband networks – they don’t supply phone and broadband services. There’s a wide range of broadband suppliers who can provide full fibre broadband, which probably includes your current landline telephone and broadband supplier (so you probably won’t need to change!). Here’s a list of broadband providers that households can use: https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/fttp-providers. You’ll probably need to pay a little bit extra for the much faster full fibre service, but if our research into rates with BT is typical, it’ll only cost a few pounds a month extra.
So if you’d like to help bring fast fibre broadband to Littlehempston, and you live in one of these postcodes:
TQ9 6LP, 6LR, 6LS, 6LT, 6LU, 6LW, 6LX, 6LY, 6LZ, 6NA, 6NB, 6NF, 6NG
please sign up to this scheme here: https://www.openreach.com/connectmycommunity.
If you’re not very happy filling in online forms, here are step by step instructions:
- Click on this link: https://www.openreach.com/connectmycommunity which should open in a new tab or window.
- Click on Find out how, or just scroll down a bit, then answer Yes to the question Is it less than 100Mbps?
- You should then be asked for your post code. Type it into the box, click in the box to say you’re not a robot, then click on the little magnifying glass search symbol.
- If you’ve filled in a Littlehempston postcode you should then be told you’re eligible to join the scheme, shown how we’re doing on our way to the target, and how many homes and businesses have already signed up. Click on Pledge for Littlehempston Ultrafast Community Project.
- You should then see the application form. Fill in your details, and tick the boxes to accept the pledge terms and privacy policy. Finally click on Submit Application.
Get in touch with us through the website’s contact form if you’ve got any questions.