Is campaigning worthwhile?

My village has just recently had it's exchange upgraded and is now accepting orders. unfortunately only a small portion of the cabinets have been upgraded equating to around half of the village.

My cabinet (NDLEN/Cab 7) houses connections for 150 properties according to KCC's Make Kent Quicker team which BT have said doesn't make it viable for connection. As a result, we are not likely to be viable until FTTP is considered between 2015-2017.

Has anyone successfully campaigned by getting neighbours to sign up on the expression of wish site to show BT there is a worthwhile demand. Alternatively, is there a way to find out how much our cabinet would cost to upgrade to try and push this through some of the current planning applications in progress as a condition of new development in our area of the village?

Thoughts and experiences gratefully received!

Paul.

None of the cabinets on that exchange were done with just commercial money, six are part of the Kent BDUK project and the other four are the smaller ones, i.e. your cab looks to be smaller, so in terms of value for money it lost out compared to some others.

Yours is probably the next one on the list if they do another in the area.

So if you want to campaign it is the combination of planners at council and BT. Ball park cabinet costs vary between £30,000 to £50,000 and a big variable can be the cost of power.

The problem is that the project has limited funding, and there may be other cabs with 200 premises that can be enabled and not yours.

iif the cab is not commercial and not covered under BDUK deployment the community then cab gap fund the gap through prviate monies - that is the only way the cab will be enabled

see openreach FAQ's rural Broadband for process

But isn't it also possible that Superfast Extension Programme may actually cover the cabinet after all? Until SEP has identified which postcodes will be covered, there's still no certainty over whether BDUK will cover or whether a community needs to organise a different approach.

SEP process still lilkey to be under BDUK -- but tha would be a 2 -3 year delivery away even if it were covered as SEP will be at end of currnet BDUk project and still be determined on Value for money (small cab and few prems) not great value for money as Cost per THP is high

NDLEN's postcode and the surrounding area has coverage from vfast (www.vfast.co.uk) - have you checked your postcode ?? I was working with a business further down the A20 where broadband estimates (and actual) were 1Mbp/s download and no clear FTTC availability date. It was the KCC broadband website that woke me up to VFast/Orbital, and we ordered Orbital business 10Mbps symmetric service.

The dire weather and some access challenges on the site delayed installation, but the business has been very pleased with the service since it went live.

Just a suggestion that you might like to investigate.

Thanks all, I'm going to try and at least get the local neighbours to register their interest on the Kent broadband website.

Sometime spent with the local phone book should let me triangulate which are the roads I need to leaflet.

I had looked at vFast, but I had some concern over latency as I do a lot of work that needs low latency connections. (It doesn't hurt the gaming either.. 8-0 )

Paul.

Use this website to find all your local postcodes.

Then use the BT Wholesale full address checker, and enter just the postcode, and submit. It will then return a list of addresses which you can now click, check the cabinet, hit the back button and check the next and so on.

End result you will know exactly which properties are connected to your cabinet.

Cheers for that Ronski, that saves a bundle of time!

Paul.

Hi Paul,

We have been trying to get in contact with KCC about local FTTC upgrades. Our Cabinet has been setup for fiber however BT has yet to admit that fiber is coming to the area. Our local counsel is unaware of upgrades and has not been informed by KCC. In the end we setup a small campaign website to try and draw attention to the fact we really want FTTC in the area.