If you have any concerns or difficulty with the BT page, please contact me as soon as possible – I can help. Time is desperately short as enough homes must register by about 18th March to stand a chance of securing the funding.
Each home wanting to participate in the BT full fibre upgrade, which will transform the broadband for all of Bedmonton, Wormshill and Frinsted, must register their ‘pledge’ on a BT web page.
You can do this straight away here: https://www.openreach.com/connectmycommunity
Each ‘pledge’ costs nothing and confirms to BT that the Government funding should be used for this project (even though there is nothing else that can be done with it). Click or tap here to read the full pledge terms.
Click or tap here to read a quick pledge guide.
In-Short: Please be sure to chose ‘Business’ or ‘Sole Trader’ if you can, and please select local body top-up funding (this is the KCC money).
What are you Committing to Do?
There is no cost to make the pledge.
By pledging your support, you are agreeing to upgrade your broadband to the new service within 2 months of being advised that it’s available. This means contacting your current Broadband provider (BT, Sky, Plusnet etc) and asking for ‘full fibre broadband’ within 2 months of BT completing the work.
- There are no installation charges as these are covered by the Government grant.
- Being ‘in-contract’ with the existing provider will not be a problem as they are required to provide the service upgrade when it’s available.
- PlusNet still don’t offer full-fibre, but have announced that they will be launching their service in the next few months. Since BT will take up to 12 months to do the work, staying with PlusNet should not be a problem.
Getting the New Service
- OpenReach will install a new, fibre-optic cable and provide a new socket next to your existing phone line.
- For almost all homes, the new line will be connected to the existing pole nearby and so it’s very unlikely that they will need to dig-up your garden or drive.
- You can chose to keep your existing phone line or not (for example to connect a house phone, answering machine, or house alarm)
- The new service will cost slightly more, usually less than £5pm increase, and deliver a much faster and more reliable connection.
- You will receive a new hub with the new broadband service.
- To satisfy the pledge terms, your new connection must double your existing broadband speed – which will be one of the cheapest options.
- The fastest speed (available to everyone) will be 900Mbps.
A note for Wormshill residents in The Street: a 100Mbps service must be selected as we have a faster speed currently than the other areas. But this is still one of the cheapest options.
When Will This Happen?
We need enough pledges by about 18th March as the current funding is being put on-hold in April due to a new Government policy. If we don’t get enough support by then, most likely we will have to wait for OpenReach to do the work themselves which could be many years away.
If we do get enough pledges, OpenReach will take about 10-12 months to do the work and therefore the new service should be available to order sometime around spring 2023.