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 April 2021
- 97.34% of Suffolk premises currently able to receive superfast broadband – speeds greater than that of 24mbps. There has been no change on this over the past few months because the 2nd contract has now finished and Openreach are completing planning and scoping for the 3rd contract.
- 0.29% of properties in Suffolk have broadband speeds of less than 2mbps (down nearly 0.6%).
- A Third contract is now starting and scoping and planning work is due to finish in May 2021. This contract will supply 5000 properties Superfast Broadband over an 18 month period. Work on getting the first properties live with Superfast will hopefully be in May 2021.
- 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
- 113 “public” buildings such as district and borough council buildings, nhs buildings now have full fibre broadband in them. There are due to be 400 buildings in total to be upgraded. Further information can be found on this at https://www.suffolk.gov.uk/business/projects-and-programmes/suffolk-cloud-network/
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. This is only open for areas classified as “Ofcom area 3” areas which are those most in need of Superfast or Gigabit broadband. 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.
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