Dear Fellow Hiltonians

I have received a number of queries from villagers over the last week or so regarding the plans that County Broadband have for potentially providing hyperfast broadband for Hilton (the definition of hyperfast as opposed to superfast is greater that 300Mbps)

I am very happy to try and answer any questions that you may have either by email or just give me a ring on the number below, especially if there is too much detail below.

As some of you may know I am the Cambridgeshire County Council Connecting Cambridgeshire Broadband Champion for Hilton and have been heavily involved in the first two broadband initiatives into Hilton over the last 20 years (ADSL Broadband and VDSL Superfast)

As you also may have seen there is significant effort (and money) being invested in taking the UK to the next generation of broadband, which is usually called FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) which differs from the current installation of FTTC (Fibre To the Cabinet) where fibreoptic cable is taken to each of the three Openreach (who are the infrastructure provider who own the cables we pretty much all use) Cabinets and then onwards to each of our premises via the copper telephone lines. As the name implies FTTP provides a fibre optic cable directly to each premises. (one of the other main technologies being used elsewhere in the UK is CableTV infrastructure from the likes of Virgin Media, but it is unlikely that we will get that (that is another story))

I will outline my thoughts about the current County Broadband initiative and hopefully provide some more information to help you make a decision. Like all things I think there are pros and cons about this offer. It is a little wordy and long but I wanted to try and provide as much detail as possible. If I have anything wrong please do tell me, I don’t know everything!!

As you may know Openreach just provides the cables and equipment to pretty much all of the UK telephones and up until recently broadband. They do not provide the internet service itself and make their infrastructure available to the main providers/ISPs like BT, Sky, EE, Vodaphone, TalkTalk etc. This provides competition (and consequently competitive prices) and allows you to change to another provider if you are now satisfied with the price or quality of service (much like you can with Electricity and Gas)

As you can appreciate there is significant cost involved with providing new cables to every premises (digging up roads and pavements where necessary, pulling through cables and the main cables and equipment coming to the village to connect back to “the internet”.

Now, as mentioned above my preference would be to have Openreach provide those cable, to give me the choice as mentioned above, but unfortunately Openreach do not have any currently plans to provide that in Hilton in the foreseeable future (see HERE for more details). I have also spoken with Openreach to confirm that. Now that doesn’t mean that they may do it sooner, in fact this happened with the first two broadband roll outs in Hilton for ADSL and VDSL, which were bought forward considerably in the end, but there is no guarantee that this would happen with FTTP for us.

So, hopefully that outlines the current status. Now as I said there are pros and cons to moving ahead with County Broadband (or any other provider who may decide that Hilton was an opportunity to cable (I am not aware of any others and have checked with a few))

Some considerations to think about

• The main advantage I see of going with County Broadband (assuming enough villagers sign up to a service) is that it is likely that we will get a hyperfast infrastructure sooner than waiting for Openreach, as that is still an unknown.
• We can only take the internet service from them, no competition, and consequently in their hands for quality of service and price.
  • They would be able to increase the prices and our only alternative would be to drop to their slower services speeds or change back to our current copper superfast service
    • Their lowest service they offer is the 50Mbps at £28 (they will only guarantee 25Mbps (that is both upload and download speeds) but is likely to be faster depending on contention.
  • It is possible in the future that County Broadband may open their network to other providers (like BT etc) but this is not guaranteed
• It is very unlikely that your current internet speed with current copper technology will get any faster (there is a potential upgrade to something called G.FAST which can give up to 300Mbps), but this only works if you are close to a cabinet, and Openreach have said they will not be upgrading any cabinets if they don’t already have the capability, and the few villagers who have been able to take advantage of that have said that the reliability is variable.
• If County Broadband do cable the village it is VERY unlikely that Openreach with consider doing so in the future so we will only have the County Broadband options (whatever they may be (see above) going forward.
• Depending on what speed you get from your current provider, you may feel that this are sufficient for your current and future needs, however experience and history have shown that we will always want and need more (examples of simultaneous 4K and 8K TV, online gaming, homeworking etc), and it may have an advantage when selling your house.

I have asked to speak with village representatives from other villages who have had County Broadband installed for a while and who are currently going through the process to get their feedback and experiences.

A copy of the presentation that Matthew Briggs from County Broadband gave at the Parish Council Meeting on the 4^th April can be found HERE

What would be very helpful for me is to understand what our current infrastructure is like and delivering and would be very grateful if you could reply and tell me

• What your current speed is
• Is it sufficient for your needs
• Who your ISP is (ie BT, Sky, TalkTalk etc
• Address (Postcode sufficient if you don’t want to tell me)

I hope that helpful, a lot to digest I know, but as I said I would be very happy to try and answer any questions or have a discussion with you.

Best regards

Andy Bush

Connecting Cambridgeshire Hilton Broadband Champion

Editor, Hilton Village Website and Digital Archive

6, The Paddocks, Hilton, PE28 9QT

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07768294878