Bleasby - Faster Broadband Speeds

Hello All,

You have probably received a flyer in the post from Openreach talking about Ultrafast Broadband Community Scheme. I am sure many of us found the whole thing confusing and just didn’t want to be sold to.
Sound familiar…..?
Would you like some independent corroboration that this scheme is a good idea?
Below is an email from Steve Wragge who lives in Thurgarton and runs Southwell Computer Services. Steve has worked in IT for over 40 years. He has nothing to gain from endorsing this scheme – apart from accessing faster internet speeds if the scheme is successful within Thurgarton. Please read on below for Steve’s view of the scheme which was sent to the Parish Council.

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“As you probably know, Thurgarton and Bleasby villages are now two of the only villages in the Trent Valley that are still unable to get “Full-Fibre Broadband” to most of its properties (known as FTTP).

The poor and often unreliable broadband in the villages (partly due to very old cable infrastructure) means that for many people streaming LiveTV such as SkyGlass, Netflix, Amazon films, Spotify etc. is often slow with lots of stuttering/buffering.

4k TV is barely usable over the current connections and 8k TV (coming soon) will be impossible without FTTP.

This is likely to become a bigger issue soon as conventional terrestrial TV and radio broadcasting is likely to be winding down over the next few years. TV broadcasters have already stated that they do not intend to expand the current capability of terrestrial TV transmitter sites to cater for improved or additional HD-TV services meaning 8k TV will only be viable using FTTP connections.

Poor broadband also means that Thurgarton and Bleasby are far from an ideal location for modern teleworkers who need things such as Voice-over-IP (VoiP) facilities and other very responsive connections to real-time cloud business servers. We are falling behind and will not be able to attract new high-tech workers to the area unless we get this sorted.

BT (Openreach) have been holding back on implementing FTTP due to lack of “commercial demand”. However, Thurgarton, Bleasby and Fiskerton qualify for a government grant that BT (Openreach) can claim to get on with it right now.

To this end can I ask that you raise awareness locally via the village magazines, village emails and also at the parish council meetings. If we actively promote this grant and get local people onboard we could have full-fibre installed by Christmas!

BT have been sending out postcards to local residents to help get them onboard. This website contains the same information as the card.

https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/fibre-community-partnership/connect-my-community

My day job is running the Southwell Computer Centre. With 40 years working in the IT sector I would be glad to assist with information, help and services to get this one over the line.

Steve Wragge