The ducks are in a row
Jun 29, 2020Little by little we have now got to a stage where the next set of community projects begin to look viable. There are now three strands (ducks?) which line up:
Firstly there’s the DCMS rural Gigabit Connectivity scheme (RGC), which I outlined in my last post, offering vouchers worth £1.5k (residential) and £3.5k (business) and a requirement to take a 30 Mbps service min for 1 yr min.
Then there’s Openreach’s helping the Community Fibre Programme along by potentially taking the financial risk themselves – again I outlined this in the last post.
The final ‘duck’ in this row is the recently approved Borderlands Growth Deal which will make £4m available to top up funding provided by the RGC. Cumbrian communities will be eligible for this.
All this of course is to bring full fibre (FTTP) ie gigabit-capable broadband to local communities.
So who’s eligible? Firstly those in the remaining not spots which are the North of the parish. Assuming there is sufficient local community demand, it should now be possible to take it off the back burner and get on with this project.
Interestingly, those of you who are getting less than 30 Mbps from a fibre cabinet (ie FTTC) will also be eligible to achieve some valuable future-proofing and upgrade to FTTP if you act as a group.
I’ll put forward some thoughts of how to move these ideas on to practical reality in due course but it starts with beginning the conversation with your neighbours and establishing the demand.