The Parish Council have been asked to make residents aware of the scheme below.
We are happy to provide this information but must state that the Parish Council does not endorse this or any other scheme. If anyone has details of other viable schemes in the area we will also publish them here. Residents should do their own research before deciding which scheme will work best for them.
Andrew Nation can be contacted via the Chiseldon Parish Facebook page for anyone who wishes to join this scheme or find out more.
Chiseldon is an area which is not in scope for an upgrade of the physical infrastructure that runs the internet.
This is because the underlying infrastructure is owned and controlled by the BT group, who have deemed that it is not commercially viable for them to perform the upgrade; Chiseldon is a minority community who are not connected to a future proofed fibre optic broadband network. Instead, Chiseldon are serviced by an ADSL solution (through the phone line) which is old and lacks the speeds to support modern day usage of the internet. Consequently Chiseldon are a community which are now taking part in the UK Broadband 4G trial which aims to deliver high speed broadband through radio frequencies, as opposed to the physical cabling which BT are not prepared to pay for in Chiseldon.
For some members of the parish the 4G solution works fine, but for many others it does not. At a technical level there are also a number of fundamental issues with the 4G solution which means it is never going to be as scalable, reliable or future proofed like the core fibre optic broadband network which is being deployed across the UK. Additionally, there is the high possibility that this niche 4G solution will lack a volume of resellers, meaning residents are locked into a few (or perhaps even one) who will be able to monopolise prices and quality of service, as there will be little if any competition.
A group of residents in Chiseldon wish to pursue an additional proposal to the UK Broadband 4G solution, which is a programme operated by BT Openreach (the sister infrastructure company of BT) called the Community Fibre Partnership. The details of this can be found here https://www.homeandwork.openreach.co.uk/OurNetwork/CommunityFibrePartnerships.aspx
In broad terms the scheme works as follows:
1) The community gather the details of the households which want to be connected to the fibre network using a pre supplied Excel sheet from BT
2) The sheet is sent to BT who then price up the cost to connect those households. The community are asked to pay an amount towards ‘the gap’ as determined by BT between the breakeven point of where it is commercially viable / unviable for BT
3) The community then decide if they want to / can afford to fund the gap, if so, a crowdfunding site is launched where residents contribute a proportion of the upgrade cost – the exact proportion would need to be determined
4) When the funds have been raised a contract is raised and agreed with BT
5) BT the schedule the installations and the homes get connected to the network