BT community fibre partnership

Http://www.communityfibre.bt.com

Maybe of interest to some.

Currently in the extreme early stages of looking in to this as an option after our developer didn't pay BT for data services and subsequently BT decided to connect us to a cab only intended to service FTTP properties so no fibre twin. Looking like 38 properties trying to fund an FTTC cab at the moment

just read the bit about grants for schools, that is interesting I wonder how many of the final 5% have a school within a cabinet area.

But a fibre to a school will usually be for their use, and their use alone.

Is it not a bit strange for BT to put aside £2m in grants for community schemes if thats usually the case?

this is a different scheme and is around where schools do not have dedicated fibre connection

Just to back that statement up, this is what the Community Fibre website says:

In reference to www.communityfibre.bt.com/:

As part of the Community Fibre Partnership scheme, BT has made £2m available via a grant for Community Fibre Partnerships that could benefit their local school. This enables communities in the final 5% of the UK not covered by fibre broadband rollout plans to apply for a grant of up to £20,000 toward the cost of their new fibre infrastructure, if that new infrastructure could also serve their local school. So, for example, if the cost for a gap-funded solution that serves a school has been quoted as £23,000, the community would pay £11,500 and £11,500 would be match-funded from the grant.

It looks like the grant would pay half of the infrastructure cost, up to £20k (ie maximum grant on total funding requirements of £40k+).

That would make the fund able to partly cover some 200-400 schemes.

You would be surprised how much BT puts into various community or charitable schemes either directly or indirectly. For example - School Governors get several extra days special leave which can, for certain roles, be 12 days per year which is a high cost to BT for little direct benefit. School Governors are also able to call on various corporate resources at no cost to the school.

not quite

developer would have come to Openreach and asked for Voice and due to rules would have been given a new cab nr entrance to development -- for phase 1 of development -- then did FTTP for rest of Phases so cab is left with oinly a few premises on it

Not quite. I actually have confirmation from Openreach that the cabinet was intended for the larger development next door that had contracted for data (A different developer)and confirmation from our developer that BT said Fibre wasn't commercially viable here during build and therefore our developer didn't pay the excess and won't as they have no legal responsibility to do so. So currently finding out how much it is going to cost us to do it.