Superfast Broadband Update

The following is a message from Geoff Johnson, our Superfast Broadband guru –

Is There Any Further Progress for the Outlying Residents?

It’s been a long time without much happening regarding extending the superfast fibre connections beyond us fortunate residents in the central village area.  Current activity seems to involve installing the fibre duct from the telephone exchange up to Green Box 3 at the top of Mill Lane.  But I’ve only found this out by asking the workmen.  This will serve (I believe) the 01829 760XXX subscribers along Chester Road and down Clay, Whitehall and Longstone Lanes.  I’d hazard a guess that in the next few months we’ll see signs of a fibre extension up to this box.  At this point in time I can see absolutely no activity taking place to provide fibre service to box 1 at Rushton Lane and box 2 at Cotebrook.

Finding out about such progress is seemingly as good as impossible.

ADSL 2+

Those of you who experience very poor broadband performance may care in the meantime to consider the following possibility.

At around the time superfast was connected at the end of July last year; it became apparent that the Little Budworth exchange had just been upgraded to an improved service called ADSL 2+.

There was absolutely zero publicity surrounding this, but its availability is declared if you test your phone number using the BT Broadband Availability checker at https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/ (Just Google BT Broadband Availability checker).  Do not put a space in your phone number!

Check it first and, assuming ADSL 2+ is declared, you will almost certainly need to ‘renegotiate’ with your broadband supplier.  It may be necessary to be persistent to get them to change your existing service.  BE PERSISTENT!

Use of this service requires a more up-to-date broadband router to cope with ADSL 2+ but, for example, the BT routers Home Hub 4 type A and Home Hub 5 do comply with this service.

It may be necessary to renegotiate your contract but it’s quite likely in today’s environment that you could even get a cheaper service.

Just to give you a couple of examples Tony Hall who lives on the Chester Road (running off box 3) has just switched his service to Fleur (which I believe is a Talk Talk derivative).  Whereas he was getting little better than around 1 Mb per second his service is now running in the 6 to 8 Mb region!

Peter Robinson (your Parish Council Chairman) switched his phone service to BT about a year ago, but they installed a BT Home Hub 4 at the time.  Before the time the fibre service was introduced he was already haranguing BT about his poor service.  Seemingly they became aware of the ADSL 2+ availability and just upgraded his service to use it.  He is now getting over 13Mb.

Signs of Life to Chester Road

The recent works in Mill Lane have been associated with trying to clear mud and sand out of the duct leading to Green Box 3.  The current activity seems much extended and typifies the problems that arise when they go to install more cable into the existing duct.  There will be adequate room in the duct pipe but, especially at low points it gets full of muck and rubbish.  Around here that means sand – Cheshire sand.  This will have infiltrated during the fifty or more years since the duct was originally laid.  BT contractors can’t just ram drain rods down to remove the sand because that risks damaging the phone cable already in the duct.  The preferred solution is to wash it out with a water jet.

They will get through the blockages but in the meantime we’re all subjected to traffic-light working and more than normal mud!

The first and best indications of fibre provision are when we actually see work activity such as that in Mill Lane.

In the meantime if you are continually discontented with your broadband service I’d strongly recommend you to consider the ADSL 2+ opportunity.

And finally – please spread the word – If you’re aware of anyone who might not see this tell them.

If you need any further information, please contact Geoff Johnson on 01829 760422