Openreach, the UK’s largest wholesale broadband network, is urging people living and working in the historic Devon village of Lewdown to get behind a bid to bring ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband to around 145 local homes and businesses.
By applying for free Government broadband vouchers, the community can secure the new technology and start enjoying the benefits in the next 12-18 months.
If enough people sign up, they will join more than 300,000 homes and businesses across Devon which already have access to Full Fibre infrastructure.
Funding through the Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the deployment of innovative engineering techniques means thousands more remote, rural and coastal communities like Lewdown are now within reach of the ultrafast technology.
Openreach has identified around 145 homes and businesses in and around in Lewdown as being within scope for Full Fibre and is urging local people to take the next step by applying for and pooling together free Government Gigabit Vouchers to help fund the build.
Residents can check if they qualify and pledge their voucher on the Connect My Community website. Using the vouchers – which don’t cost residents anything, enables Openreach to work with a local community to build a customised, co-funded network.
Once enough people pledge and validate their vouchers, Openreach engineers will start the build. This can take up to 12-18 months, and some properties may go live before others.
Michelle Maidment, Openreach’s regional engagement manager, said: “This is a really exciting opportunity for the people of Lewdown a to bring all the benefits of ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to their community.
“Our Fibre Community Partnership programme has meant that we’ve been able to bring hundreds of communities across the UK into our Full Fibre build plans. But building out the network to these harder to reach locations is still challenging – which is why its only possible with everyone working together – you, your neighbours and Openreach. Everyone who pledges a voucher will be doing their bit to help make Lewdown one of the best-connected places in the UK. We’re investing £15 billion to build full fibre broadband to 25 million homes – and more than six million of those will be in the toughest third of the UK – but we can’t upgrade the whole country alone. This latest support from Government is a vital part of that process.”
Once the pledge target for the scheme is reached, residents need to ensure they then validate their vouchers with the Government so that Openreach can confirm that building work can get underway. As part of the funding conditions residents are asked to commit to ordering a Full Fibre service from a provider of their choice for at least twelve months once the new network is available and confirm that they are connected.
Full Fibre technology provides more reliable, resilient and future-proof connectivity; meaning fewer faults; more predictable, consistent speeds and enough capacity to easily meet growing data demands. It's also future proof, which means it will serve generations to come and won’t need to be upgraded for decades.