First Steps
Nov 18, 2013Some useful infomation came out of the meeting between Connecting Cumbria Reps and ourselves last week.
Firstly it was confirmed that under current projections, 70% of the 460 properties in the Parish are expected to get SFBB; the remaining 140 properties are projected to get somewhere between 2 Mb/s and below the 24 Mb/s of SFBB. Given that I'm guessing that most of us would settle for anything between 10 and 15 Mb/s, it may well mean that well under 140 properties will get an acceptable speed anyway.
Incidentally, any property connected to fibre via a mile or less of copper is likely to get SFBB. BT are expecting this distance to increase over the life of the project as the technology improves.
We spent some time looking at likely scenarios. What's clear is that the project - as far as rural broadband goes- is still very much in a fluid stage.There's certainly not enough detail to do any planning as far as community build goes but there is a chance to influence Connecting Cumbria priorities. In particular, if a large number of people in a neighbourhood signify their interest, it may make a difference as to which cabinets are fibre connected under the project. The more cabinets we can get connected, the less we have to do under any community build heading.
Three likely 'community build' scenarios were outlined:
- Stimulate demand and negotiate/make the financial case under Connecting Cumbria to fibre enable a cabinet. (Best)
- ‘Self Dig’ scenario where wayleaves and ducting sorted at community level.
- ·More complex individualised solutions including third party solutions.
The more we can get under the first scenario, the less it will demand in terms of finance and management of any community build.
And timescales? We've been told that it is unlikely that we will have SFBB in the Parish before 2015 but let's keep the momentum and see if we can improve on this.