Hi Everyone,
My name is Stephen, I live in Duddon and for the past two months I have been going to every property in Duddon and parts of Clotton and seeing who else wants to sign up to the governments fibre to the home scheme. https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/
What is this all about?
The internet speed in Duddon and Clotten is absolutely dreadful, with speeds being between 3 – 60 MB/s. The majority of the village is between 5 – 10 MB/s. The reason behind the poor speeds is the very old infrastructure in place, as every property in the village uses either a copper or an aluminium line to receive internet. The government scheme gives ‘vouchers’ of £1,500 per property; or £3,500 if that property also contains a business, to a provider like Openreach to upgrade from the old copper and aluminium lines to a fibre line. Fibre speeds can be up to 1,000 MB/s, so in my case, up to 200x faster!
Why should you care?
I have been attempting to improve my internet speed (5 MB/s) for two years and unfortunately I will always be limited by the physical infrastructure in place. Then the government announced this scheme to help rural communities like ours join the 21st century at potentially no cost to ourselves!
What does it involve?
The first stage is simply finding out how many properties are interested. That then lets the supplier know how much money is available to do the works. So far there are 168 properties signed up, of which 32 have businesses. This means there is £332,000 in the pot so far.
Why are you getting this leaflet?
The properties who are receiving this leaflet I either couldn’t speak to or declined when I spoke to them. I therefore wanted to give people more information on the off chance that anyone else would want to join the scheme. As the ‘Community Organiser’ I have to finalise a list of interested parties and I have put a deadline date for this of Sunday 8th November for any new participants.
How do I join?
If anyone is interested in joining the scheme, all I need is a house name or number and its postcode. This is publicly available information and there is zero commitment from anyone. If you want me to put your property down, please just contact me at duddonfibretothehomescheme@gmail.com with your house details and I will add you to the list.
What then?
The provider will then assess the works to be done, make sure there is enough money available from the government then set to work on installing the new lines and equipment to our properties.
