Making it Easier
Apr 30, 2020In a post last Summer, I outlined the launching
of a more generous voucher scheme for rural areas – the Rural Gigabit Broadband
Connectivity scheme (RGC) which is offering £3.5k for businesses and £1.5k for
residents with no requirement for a fixed ratio of businesses to residential
properties and a requirement to take upwards of (only) a 30 Mbps service. This
DCMS scheme is still open but take up through the Community Fibre Partnership
(CFP) scheme has not been as strong as envisaged. Partly this is because of the
requirement for a legal entity to contract with the provider – usually Openreach
– and the financial risks involved.
Openreach are now actively looking at helping
this process by taking the financial risk themselves where a 70% take up of
vouchers would cover the whole cost of a scheme. In such a case, there would be
no need for a legal entity to represent the community.
This potentially could help fill in the few not
spots we have in the north of the Parish but it also means that if there is a
cluster of properties on the edge of an area already covered by a fibre cabinet
(FTTC) which currently get less that 30 Mbps then they might be able to look to
their own CFP. Given that fibre cabinets are classed as a node now, a viable
scheme may result from very few properties (more than 2) – especially if one or
more were businesses.
Let me know if you are interested in following
this up. As always for this type of scheme, it requires some drive and
commitment from those who potentially stand to benefit.