We have now created a Community Broadband Scheme to give residents in your village access to the Governments Rural Gigabit Broadband Connectivity Scheme. The Scheme is to give rural areas access to superfast broadband by connecting Fibre to your property (fttp).

This is a Community-Based Scheme, and has been provided by Openreach as part of this current Community Scheme.

This Community project covers the villages of Bramerton, Rockland and Surlingham.

There are three main broadband routes to a property

1) Copper to the cabinet (ADSL) and then copper to the property, terribly slow up to a maximum of 14mbs, speed and stability reducing with distance

2) Fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and then copper to the property, fast usually up to a maximum of 80mbs, speed and stability reducing with distance from cabinet.

3) Fibre to the property (FTTP) is superfast up to 900mbs. Fast and reliable.

Currently the properties within your village are on option 2, this new scheme will take them to option 3. You can check your current speeds at BT Broadband (btwholesale.com)

Membership of the scheme is from connection to a set of BT cabinets and only residents attached to those cabinets can be included in this scheme.

This is a Government Voucher Scheme, and the Government provides a voucher of £1,500 for every residential property signed up to the scheme and £3,500 if that property has a business connected to that address including self-employment. An Inland Revenue UTR is required for confirmation of the business at the address. We add all the vouchers together to pay for the build out of the whole scheme.

We already have a quote from Openreach for this scheme, the cost should easily be met through the voucher scheme detailed above. We would like to be able to ensure that all properties are able to obtain this service, so the more people who sign up the better. We need 50% of properties enrolled to ensure the costs for the whole scheme are completely covered by the vouchers

Recent events have shown that a fast and reliable broadband is very important, a new utility. We would ask that you please promote this scheme within your parish and neighbourhood, the more people enrol the surer we can be of getting the scheme built out.

You will receive a letter from Openreach explaining the scheme and the terms and conditions and asking you to enrol. If you apply for a voucher:

You will have to arrange a fibre contract and the requirement from the Government is that you sign up for a min 50 MBs speed. Fibre to the property guarantees the speed you will receive, no deterioration due to distance.

The network belongs to Openreach and so you can go to any ISP using their network. BT is the largest but there are lots of others and growing every day, so you do not have to use BT.

All providers have this basic deal, and you can pay for more speed to do all the fancy things like streaming

I will update you as to when you can enrol.

We look forward to you promoting and joining the Scheme. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email: We look forward to you promoting and joining the Scheme. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email: vic.thomson.cllr@norfolk.gov.uk

Apologies the email link is not working, please copy and paste into your email.

Posted on behalf of Councillor Vic Thomson