Superfast Fibre Broadband Update – May 2015

Superfast Fibre Broadband is now available throughout much of the Village. BT have now activated two of the three Superfast Fibre Broadband cabinets in the village.

Superfast Broadband cabinet (right) linked to Cabinet 4 (left) serving the east of the Village

The two cabinets which have been enabled are:-

CABINET 1 – located at the junction of Van Diemans and Joyces Road This appears to serve

Van Diemans
Wordsworth Close
Joyces Road
Tyrrell Close
Upper Crale
Perry’s Road
Glebe Road
Part of Huntersfield.

CABINET 4 – located in the High St outside the school which appears to serve the EAST side of the village including:-

Cottage Road
Bow Road
Upper Green
Chapel Road
Frogmore Lane
Church Green
Horsecroft
Ock Meadow
Part of the High St
Sheards Lane

If you live in these parts of the village and want to upgrade your broadband service:-

Check first if you can get Superfast on your line – go to the BT Broadband Availability Checker at www.dslchecker.bt.com and input your phone number. At the top it will show your number and which cabinet it is connected to. If it does not show a cabinet number then Superfast isn’t available on your line yet.
Check under Featured Products whether FTTC (this is the BT product name for Superfast Broadband) is shown as available. If it is, then you can order Superfast. It will also show the maximum and minimum downstream and upstream speeds you can expect on your line under FTTC. Currently only Cabinets 1 and 4 have FTTC. If you are connected to cabinet 5, FTTC is not yet available but should be shortly.
Contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and tell them that your exchange has recently been enabled for Superfast Fibre Broadband by BT and that you want to upgrade your line. They will run a check and should confirm that Superfast is available and what Superfast plan options you have. There is usually a setup charge for upgrading to Superfast and the monthly cost may be more, the same or slightly less that what you are paying currently. Obviously this and the cost will vary depending on the ISP, but basically you have a choice of two levels of service – up to 38Mbps and up to 76Mbps downstream speed. The actual speed will depend on your distance from the street cabinet and the best estimate is provided by the BT checker. Your ISP will send you a new modem or router in order that you can connect to Superfast and there may be a charge for this.

If you live in the WEST of the village i.e:-

High Street (west)
Faringdon Road
Marlborough Close
Huntersfield
Church Path
Warwick Close
Manor Crescent & Green
St Denys’ Close
Spencers Close
Nursery End
Farm Piece
Mawkes Close
Heigham Court
Knolles Drive

– you either are or will be connected to Cabinet 5 which is on the junction of the High St with Huntersfield. This cabinet has not been enabled yet as there is insufficient duct capacity between the cabinet and the one outside the exchange. We are waiting for BT contractors to install new ducting which appears to be scheduled for week commencing 10th May. Once the ducting has been installed, the cables re-routed and Cabinet switched on then it should be possible to order Superfast broadband within two weeks of the works being completed. An update will be posted here when this is done.

Richard Ryan
NPSC Member

10th May 2015