Bring fibre broadband to Gladstone Park

I just did my now daily check on our fibre status, and it now shows as AVAILABLE … although I’ve not had formal confirmation from Openreach yet, the fact that the official Openreach and BTWholesale checkers are now showing that FTTC is available means that this is now orderable from your preferred internet provider; I’ve just placed my order, can’t wait for them to process it and finally give me high-speed broadband. You can check the status and estimated speeds for your line at our checker here: http://www.eqsystems.co.uk/broadband-availability-checker.html Thank you everyone for all your support in getting this project to happen … do keep me posted with how you get on, or if you have any issues. Happy surfing! Cheers Phil

Latest update from Openreach ... I just wanted to get in touch with you regarding your community funded partnership with BT. Everything is now in place and our work is progressing to ensure you can order superfast fibre in line our contract agreement which is 12 months after the signing of the contract. We have built the many tasks required onto our workforce system and we are now working with our suppliers, power companies and local highways as deployment gets underway. You may not see our engineers working near to your community as we may well be working anywhere on the route from the local telephone exchange.

Hi everyone, Just a quick update from Openreach, to say that the survey and planning stage continues, and that current planned delivery date (subject to change) is June 2018. Here's hoping for fibre by the summer! Cheers, Phil

Evening everyone, Just thought I’d share the latest update from Openreach, which you’ll find below. Also, just a reminder to please let me know by 31st October 2017 if you missed out on contributing to the project but would still like to; I will take this as a commitment from you. Spread the word amongst your contacts, neighbours, friends, etc. ... there are still loads of potential contributors out there, so the more the merrier. (And cheaper!) Thanks of course to those who’ve already got back to me on this, your responses have been noted. UPDATE FROM OPENREACH We thought we’d get in touch since you signed to have a Community Fibre Partnership with us as we’re looking forward to bringing fast, fibre broadband to your community. Based on other community funded structures we install, we anticipate it could be a few months before you get to see any activity because the next stage of the process takes quite a while. And as noted in your contract, delivery of your new fibre infrastructure will be scheduled to be delivered 12 months from the date of receipt of the signed contract. The next phase of your fibre infrastructure that Openreach will be working on is typically the field survey. At the survey stage, a broad outline of the kind of things that are undertaken is: The blueprints from the design stage are checked in your community, to make sure that what looks good on paper works in the real world. Our surveyor needs to check that there’s enough space alongside all the existing utilities underground for our new cables, and whether there’s enough space to accommodate their equipment. They’ll also need to determine things like whether any road closures are needed to install fibre and, if so, apply to the local authority for road traffic management, traffic lights etc. They’ll work closely with your local authority to make sure fibre is installed safely and with the minimum of disruption to local people. Just so you know, Openreach won't need to contact you about doing any surveying. With kindest regards The Community Fibre Team

Just a quick update for those not on the main email list ... Contracts were signed a few weeks ago, and all the funds have now been received and handed over to Openreach ... work is under way! Some people missed out on contributing but would still like to ... please contact me directly about that if you've not already received my email on the main mailing list. Detailed updates will be sent to the mailing list, so that's the best way to keep updated ... get in touch with me if you want to be added to that. Thanks! Phil

Fantastic effort, everyone ... we've hit out fundraising target already. We're now waiting for the funds to come through, then we'll get the contract signed with Openreach and work will begin. I'll be sending out a full update to the mailing list, if you want to be added to that, please let me know. Thanks again for all your efforts! Phil