Friday 2 August 2013

BT's superfast plans for Stocksfield

On Wednesday I went to County Hall in Morpeth for a meeting with the County Council's chief executive, Steve Stewart, and our MP, Guy Opperman to discuss how plans for superfast broadband are going across Northumberland.

In previous updates I have stated that we expect only 75% of the Stocksfield exchange area to benefit from the superfast fibre that will be laid by BT over the next couple of years. On Wednesday I learnt that we will soon (in the next couple of weeks) be getting sight of BT's actual rollout plans which means we will be able to see just what proportion of the Stocksfield are will be getting the fibre broadband and which homes and businesses will need an alternative solution. This will give us a much better idea of where we need to focus our efforts over the coming months.

As soon as I get the information I will look at ways of sharing it as widely as possible. I have arranged a stall at the Stocksfield Festival where representatives from the Northumberland Community Development Network and iNorthumberland will be joining me to let people know about the services available to local people and businesses to help them make the most of the superfast broadband revolution. I aim to be able to show the planned BT fibre provision there too. More information on that nearer the time.

4 comments:

  1. Don't suppose you know anything about fibre coming to Prudhoe at all?

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  2. I don't know, but you can check the status of Prudhoe at iNorthumberland.org.uk. Looking at it now it says:

    "Superfast broadband will be made available to this area by iNorthumberland Intervention

    Superfast broadband is not currently available.

    If you can’t currently access superfast broadband we understand your frustration. Registering your demand for superfast broadband will help us in getting it to you sooner.

    The current number of properties who have registered their demand for superfast broadband in your exchange area is 397

    This equates to 6.9% Please note that we update our demand registrations monthly, and collate results from a range of different sources.

    The iNorthumberland programme relies on an army of Digital Champions to support demand registrations and to enable the delivery of community based broadband projects.

    THERE ARE NO DIGITAL CHAMPIONS"

    That suggests that it will be part of the 2014-2016 rollout.

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  3. Update: I emailed iNorthumberland who have come back to me to say that the Prudhoe exchange IS enabled but not all street cabinets are. If you let us know your post code we can look into your case in more detail.

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  4. I just put the post code of the Dr Syntax pub (Prudhoe) into the search page at http://www.inorthumberland.org.uk/my-area and it shows that superfast broadband is already available there. What does that page tell you for your own post code?

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