Superfast Broadband is (Almost) Here!

The below is the content of a flyer that is going to be delivered to residents of Temple that live outside of the Island where a regular newsletter has been carrying updates. I was able to talk informally to one of the Openreach engineers today who informed me that fibre has now been run to our new cabinet and that everything should be within a couple of days of turnover to Call Flow. I have asked our liaison at Openreach for an update but have not heard anything that would give us a good idea of when a turnover will occur. Once the turnover is done Call Flow have pledged to be ready in a week! So the question is...what is ALMOST?

Superfast Broadband is (Almost) Here!

In the coming days Temple will go from having some of the nation's worst broadband speeds to having some of the best.  Bradenham Lane is currently closed to allow for the laying of the fibre cable for our new service.   We are close!

Background

Three years ago I learned that BT had decided that it was economically unviable for them to upgrade our Internet service to a fast, fibre based, solution.  The good news is that the government is helping communities like ours with a program called Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK).   I contacted Superfast Berkshire, who are working with BDUK, and they introduced me to Roger Thurston who lives on the Island and was also interested in getting Temple onto the high speed internet.

To make a long story short, with the help of the community, we were able to get Temple included in the current round of funding for broadband upgrades.  This was announced two years ago (July of 2015) with the expectation that we would have our new service by June of the following year.  Again, in the interest of brevity, it is now almost June of 2017, it has been a long road to get here, but our upgrade should be completed very soon.

What This Means to You

If you are happy with your current broadband service you do not need to do anything.  Nothing will change for you.  The good news is that it may actually be a little easier for you to sell your house when the time comes as having access to a fibre based Internet connection is important to a growing number of home buyers!

If you are interested in the new service you will need to contact Call Flow to switch from your current phone and internet service provider (Bt, Talktalk, etc) to a Call Flow package.  They won the contract to provide the needed technical infrastructure to give us access to the high speed Internet.  There were costs to provide that service that were above and beyond what would normally be entailed and while some of those costs were offset by Superfast Berkshire and BDUK there was also an investment made by Call Flow.  For this reason the high speed service will cost slightly more than a “normal” service from vendors such as BT, Talktalk, or Sky.  At some point in the future there may be other vendors offering us service using the infrastructure that Call Flow has put into place but for now you can ask your current vendor but be prepared to contact Call Flow!

Browse to https://www.callflow.co.uk/ and enter your postcode to see how fast an upgraded connection will be.  The closer you are to the new cabinets the faster your speed will be.  Our estimate is for 90 mbps! They are taking orders already.

Please note that I am in no way connected with Call Flow.  I am simply communicating what I know about the upgrade.