Aylesbury Vale Broadband to Connect First 100Mbps FTTH Customers

The £1.5m Aylesbury Vale Broadband project, which is currently deploying an ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network to the rural Buckinghamshire (England) villages of North Marston and Granborough, has announced that their first customers will go live next month.

The roll-out phase finally began during August 2015 (here) and since then AVB has made good progress with their massive civil works project. As such the new fibre optic cable is now under the streets of North Marston (home to around 800 people) and the service has just been given a go-live date of 16th November 2015.

Meanwhile residents of Granborough (600 people) are due to follow in the coming weeks / months and there’s also the prospect of further expansion going forward, provided the necessary funding can be secured.

AVB Statement

“If you don’t happen to live in North Marston and Granborough and are also suffering from poor broadband, then be reassured that we want to bring our network to you. It takes time to complete the civil work and we still need to receive the go-ahead from AVDC but as soon as we can expand our network we will – so stay tuned for more news.”

The project is supported by the Aylesbury Vale District Council via public investment from the New Homes Bonus Fund and typically focuses upon areas that are expected to miss out under the local Broadband Delivery UK and BT fuelled Connected Counties programme.

Customers of the new service can expect to pay from £30 per month for an unlimited usage 30Mbps service (symmetrical), which rises to £38 if you want the top 100Mbps connection (more expensive business options are also available) and the first month of service will be FREE.

On top of that there’s a £150 connection fee, which is a rather unique self-install package that contains the AC spec WiFi router, as well as sufficient ducting, ancillaries and the physical work required to connect you to the network. In other words, the AVB service will be delivered to the property boundary, where customers will then have 3 choices for the final installation:

1. You can install the fibre and router yourself at no additional cost – AVB provide full instructions with your self-install kit which includes the router, ducting, etc.
2. You can use a local electrician or handyman to do the work for you.
3. Or you can order an installation from Chris Constable, our approved installer from Granborough who will undertake the installation for a typical fee of £95 for up to 35m external installation.

It’s worth pointing out that two local fixed wireless broadband ISPs, Village Networks and Rapid Rural, claim to already be present in much of the same area and that has raised questions about AVB’s use of public funding. Never the less AVB believes that its network will be much more future proof and capable than those.