Community Action Suffolk continues to regularly attend the Suffolk Broadband and Digital Connectivity Working Group hosted by Suffolk County Council.
This meeting provides us an opportunity to feedback concerns we hear from your communities but also to hear the very latest plans and updates and how the Better Broadband for Suffolk scheme is running.
Highlights – up to end of Oct 2020
- 96.95% of Suffolk premises currently able to receive superfast broadband – speeds greater than that of 24mbps (An increase of approximately 0.8% this year so far)
- 0.36% of properties in Suffolk have broadband speeds of less than 2mbps
- 1.14% of properties in Suffolk have broadband speeds of less than 2mbps
- Suffolk Cloud Network is a new network infrastructure project that will provide fast, highly flexible network connections to public sector sites in Suffolk. The network is provided by MLL Telecoms, in partnership with CityFibre. The new fibre network will extend to over 300 public sector sites in Suffolk (the Suffolk Cloud Network). The towns covered by this include Bury St Edmunds, Felixstowe, Haverhill, Ipswich, Mildenhall, Newmarket, Stowmarket, Sudbury, Woodbridge. This work should be finished by March 2021.
- A number of other projects involving CityFibre and East Suffolk Council are mid way through providing “ultrafast” broadband service to parts of the county or to make our market towns into “smart towns” by providing Free wifi and footfall tracking.
- The second contract with Openreach has now completed ahead of schedule and with more properties upgraded than stipulated.
- A Third contract has now been agreed and deployment work will start on this as soon as contract 2 finishes.
- The third contract won’t deliver 100% of properties but will get us closer to the stated desire of complete “superfast” coverage in Suffolk of Suffolk County Council
FAQ’s
How do I check whether I can get or when I will be able to get Superfast Fibre Broadband?
Visit www.betterbroadbandsuffolk.com and use the “Can you connect” menu item along the top and then follow the instructions on the page
I’m a business or community and really need better connectivity – what can i do?
There is a voucher scheme available for businesses in rural areas, where they can get up to £3,500 towards the installation of a “full fibre” solution i.e. one from the exchange to the business premise. This may pay for the whole of the installation but in some cases may not – in this scenario you would need to pay the balance. Please visit the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme page to find out more or go to the Government site to find out more. This has been a very under publicised scheme so please make use of it. If you want to join together with a pool of businesses or properties within a community then you can pool your vouchers to install Fibre in a particular location.
This scheme in only active till March 2021 so please act swiftly if you want to use this voucher.
Beyond Community Action Suffolk – how else do i found out about what Suffolk County Council are doing?
You can subscribe to the Suffolk County Council newsletter or you can view their previous newsletters at https://betterbroadbandsuffolk.com/about/subscribe-to-our-newsletter
Matthew Morling, IT Manager
[email protected]
01473 345321