Do I need Gigabit broadband?

Have you noticed that internet speeds are often slower in the evening? Is your connection noticeably more unstable during the day, and especially during lockdown when working or being educated at home? More than ever, we are streaming movies, watching Boxsets, using Zoom/Teams or gaming. The main cause of a drop in broadband speed is contention ratio. The contention ratio refers to the number of people that are sharing the same copper cable as you. Eg, compare it to the number of cars that drive on School Lane in Grayshott, the more cars, the more congestion, therefore its much slower getting everyone to school.

Terminology you may hear about but not fully understand is Bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data you use when on the internet. The most common way of measuring bandwidth is in Megabits per second (Mbps). The average UK broadband speed is 63Mbps, yet in rural areas such as Grayshott, it averages around 30Mbps or lower. Many children were affected during lockdown with a slow internet and could not access their school teams/zoom calls. This slow bandwidth is due to the last mile connection from the exchange/cabinet to the home/business being a copper connection, which can only provide bandwidth speeds between 10Mbps to a maximum of 80Mbps.

Our plan for Grayshott Gigabit is to offer the fastest bandwidths (100Mbps to 1500Mbps) to transfer larger amounts of data much faster. With gigabit broadband, we can ensure much better internet experience for all our customers. This benefits the area, as gigabit broadband increases the value and saleability of homes within the community, when compared to areas without.

So we urge you to take advantage of this new utility build as and when we pass your road. Currently the government is helping to fund this new infrastructure build, and each premise owner can benefit from this subsidy, therefore not being faced with such a high bill & installation costs. You may not be aware but the UK has one of the lowest gigabit penetration rates in Europe at the moment, hence the government is keen to create Gigabit Britain to improve the digital economy and improve rural internet access, so that no community is left behind.

Our planning for the Phase 1 pilot roll-out in Grayshott is now complete, and so very soon we will start the project build. You may see some new additional wooden poles being installed in certain areas, this is to ensure that we can build the fibre network as fast as possible, also minimising digging, road closures and any additional disruption.

We will be looking for users to trial and test-run our service before we go commercially live. These early adopters will be selected as we pass each area with the fibre. Priority will be given to those premises that can either be connected aerially with fibre from the nearest pole, or those that have existing ducts in/under their front gardens/driveways leading directly to the property.

We would encourage any homeowners installing or planning new driveways to lay ducting at the same time, so that when connecting fibre to your property, there is minimal disruption. If you have electric gates, we may be able to use the same ducts as those electrical wires if they run to your premise, as fibre optics does not have the same interference properties as copper cables.

Although all homes will be connected, some properties will be subject to additional site survey/costs if they have long driveways or additional challenges. For properties with particularly difficult access, we may be able to use technology called Fixed Wireless Access which also provides gigabit speeds. For this we would install a small dish on the chimney or side of the house to connect to a nearby antenna to receive gigabit speeds over the air.

Please note, once the government subsidy runs out, we may have to charge an installation fee for any properties not connecting in the first deployment wave. So please take advantage of government subsidies like the gigabit voucher scheme (GBVS) and let’s get our community connected!

By Karina Roshier – Customer Success Manager, Grayshott Gigabit Limited

Karina’s role will be supporting the team, liaison with the community and first point of contact for customers once we start the network build. Karina has lived in Grayshott since 2008 and is raising her family within our lovely community, therefore has a vested interest and complete support of this project becoming a reality. Many years ago, Karina was a co-founder of PIPEX Internet who were one of the original pioneers of the ADSL broadband era so has a working knowledge of an internet start-up company becoming a brand leader.