The Broadband Super highway finally reaches Caldecote

OK, I know it has been a long time coming. I have had no end of questions, emails, chats with people at events, on pathways, cycleways etc. all asking the same thing “when are we getting the broadband we were promised”.

Well, I can now answer that question with some degree of certainty.

This afternoon, Tuesday 18-September-2012, I received an email from the BT Partnership Director, and here is what it says:

Thank you for your note, and for your continued patience.  We are very grateful for all you and the team have contributed to this project.

 

In terms of an update on the situation with the rest of the Madingley exchange, I am very pleased to say that both FTTC cabinets are live, and that the first PON area (Grafton Drive) will be released for customers to place orders tomorrow.  There are 6 PON areas in total in Madingley and I’m expecting 3 further areas to be released in the next couple of weeks.

 

I understand your comment about the time that it has taken to get the service in and running, but right at the start we did say that the RTI areas were going to be challenging for us and that we would be using them to learn about the deployment of fibre services in sparse rural communities.  It has been a very interesting journey – and the learning is continuing.

 

We have identified a small group of around 170 premises in the Madingley exchange area that will need an aerial delivered fibre solution – we are still developing our solution which means that we will not be able to deliver to those premises as quickly as we had hoped.  We are currently trialling solutions in Cornwall, but the issues we have are essentially around safety – for example, asking engineers to splice fibres 4-5m in the air on poles shared with an electricity utility is certainly a challenge!  We are hoping that we will be able to complete the fibre installation for those last few homes early next year.

I will keep you updated on progress as we complete the development of the solution and move it out of the trials in Cornwall.

For those who are wondering – PON stands for Passive Optical Network. It is a system that brings fiber cabling and signals all or most of the way to the end user at their premises/home/business. The one on Grafton Drive is on the pavement outside the shop and I recall in August stopping by to chat to the engineers when they were working on it.

I await further information on where the others are and hopefully a bit more on which houses are covered by each PON.