Community Broadband Lead, Councillor Richard Champness, found Remo and his Openreach team busy testing the new Ultrafast Full Fibre Broadband service in The Street on Tuesday.
Not long now! If you bagged a voucher last year, keep an eye out for your email in a few short weeks which will let you know when to order your new service. In the meantime, we reproduce below an earlier communication as a reminder of the process of the installation and what residents need to do once the network becomes live: –
Process of Build and Commissioning:
Did you apply for and validate a Gigabit Voucher?
The build process may include Openreach installing a cable to your property. Once the build is complete and tested Openreach will commission each of the 4 Networks that supply Bury Parish individually, this means that certain Premises may be able to order a service before others. The build process should be largely complete by end of March this year.
What do you need to do?
Once you have been notified the network is live for your address you need to order a full fibre (FTTP) service within 14 days. For conditions, please see this flyer.
There are a range of Service Providers available on the Openreach Network which can be found by inputting your postcode on a comparison service such as Uswitch. For an early idea of available packages you might choose to input an Amberley postcode ahead of the Bury network being live.
Landline phone lines:
When you order your faster broadband FTTP service you will have an option to retain your existing landline on a copper wire connection which will continue to work as it does now. If this is what you prefer, please ensure you clearly state that you want:
FTTP Broadband, keeping PSTN Voice service over existing copper line.
Alternatively, you may be offered:
What may be offered in terms of voice service when migrating over to FTTP is the VOIP (Voice over IP) product – This means that the telephone service would be a cloud-based service where the ‘Landline handset’ plugs into the Router as opposed to the traditional telephone socket. This product may be sold as part of the broadband package, unless stated that you do not want VOIP.
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House Alarms and Care Alert Systems
Another thing to think about when migrating to FTTP is the impact on any hard-wired systems that rely on the existing copper telephone service – this includes Alarm systems (Paid services that have a link to the telephone line) generally managed by the alarm company and welfare systems such as pendant alarms generally provided by the District Council.
There are a number of solutions for the above examples which should be discussed with the provider of the system prior to migrating to VOIP (this does not apply if you are keeping voice service on the PSTN (Copper) Network).
Those premises who do not have a Gigabit Voucher
Once your local network is live, have a search on a comparison website, as suggested above, to see what options are available. We suggest that you ask your supplier what the arrangements for connection to the new FTTP Broadband service will be.
If you receive government benefits, you could qualify for one of these discounted price plans.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/costs-and-billing/social-tariffs
Any questions?
Email Broadband Community Lead: – richard.champness@buryparishcouncil.org.uk
or
Email Mike Simpson our Parish Clerk: – clerk@buryparishcouncil.org.uk
