Broadband update August 2022

On 30 August Openreach provided an update on the Community Fibre Partnership initiated by the Baldernock Trust and Baldernock Community Council to bring full-fibre broadband to most parts of Baldernock and many in neighbouring communities. They reported the following:

‘Our chief engineers have advised they are currently in the survey stage of the project and the engineers are working towards an estimated completion date of 12/04/2023. We will continue to monitor the progress of the project and we will be in touch again in another 2 months’ time to provide you with a further update.’

Good news about our better broadband project!  The following message was received on 30 June from the Openreach Community Fibre Team:

“We are working to a 12-month delivery timeline to bring Ultrafast Full Fibre broadband to your community.  Throughout this time, you will receive updates approximately every eight weeks. In the first six months these emails will update you in relation to our expected delivery milestones.  However, as we get further into the build stage, we will be in touch with you to let you know how things are progressing. Delivery falls into roughly 4 stages with many tasks in each stage. These stages are Survey, Plan, Build, Test and Commissioning.

Survey - This is where we upload the initial details onto our workforce systems, check capacity in our network and exchange, and send out a survey officer to check that the physical geography and plan lines up with what we have on our systems. At this stage we can also determine if any traffic management or road closure are required, and, if so, we will need to line up local highways. Once the survey returns are back, we move into planning.

Planning is where our engineers will provide a solution based on the survey to give the best speeds possible. They will also order kit and build the whole plan on our systems to create a pipeline of work for our workforce and produce the job packs.

Building of the Network - We will begin work on the civil engineering works which could be anywhere on the network from your local area back to the exchange. The first job is to ‘prove’ any underground network i.e. check the underground ducting for blockages caused by wear and tear or blocked over time with mud and silt. Once we know the underground path is clear we can then begin to install the cable and blow through the fibre optic cable. Once this is complete, we will test the fibre network from one end to another to check the community will get the required speeds. We call this ‘light’ testing. Once we get the correct measurements, you’ll be glad to know we are almost there and can move onto the final stage of commissioning!

Commissioning is where we complete all final tests and physical audits to ensure everything is compliant. We also amend all our systems to reflect this new work and handover to the service providers so they can also update their systems. Once complete we are ready to go and orders can then be placed for fibre! At this stage we will let you know that Ultrafast Full Fibre broadband is available to you, so that orders can be placed with a chosen service provider.

As you can appreciate installing fibre is complex and takes time but we will do what we can to get this service live as soon as possible. I hope I have helped explain the process and given an idea of the work and timelines involved.”  

​The project to bring better broadband to Baldernock

At the moment only a small number of Baldernock residents and businesses can access gigabit-capable (‘ultrafast’) FTTP or ‘full fibre broadband’ and many in the community have extremely poor broadband provision.  For that reason, Baldernock initiated a Community Fibre Partnership (CFP) with Openreach to make FTTP available to almost every part of Baldernock as well as to many in neighbouring communities who share parts of their network, especially our neighbours in Torrance. Once the project is complete, every home and business included in the project – detailed and listed here – will be able to connect to the new network and obtain all the benefits of FTTP broadband.  

Any questions?
If you have any questions about this Community Fibre Partnership, please contact Baldernock Community Council (baldernockcc@gmail.com) or The Baldernock Trust (thebaldernocktrust@gmail.com), or contact local resident Lesley Wiseman who is the communities’ primary contact with Openreach. You can call her on 07810698678 or email her at lesley.wiseman@hotmail.com.