First Granborough Customer Connects to 300Mbps FTTH Broadband Pilot

Good news for homes and businesses in the Buckinghamshire (England) village of Granborough today because the first local customer is expected to go live on Aylesbury Vale Broadband‘s new 300Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network, which has just reached the area.

The AVB pilot network, which is currently supported by £200k of public investment from the Aylesbury Vale District Council (AVDC) and this could soon be boosted by another £500k (latest AVB uptake and financial data), has already gone live in parts of nearby North Marston and it first began the 3km extension to Granborough all the way back in February 2016.

Unfortunately the deployment to Granborough is said to have been “plagued with problems“, most of which were caused by bad weather (e.g. heavy rain makes it particularly difficult to dig trenches using heavy machinery through muddy fields). As such the extension has taken longer than expected, but they’ve finally made it and the first customer should go live sometime today. But more work will be needed to reach the rest of the village’s 550 or so population.

AVB Statement

We are now planning the route our fibre will take through Granborough and need to establish which streets have the most demand so we can target them first. To do this we have decided to start accepting a small deposit of £20 (the deposit will be deducted from your connection fee – in other words when we deliver our ultra-fast fibre broadband service to your property boundary, instead of paying £150 you will only need to pay £130) and this will allow us to prioritise which streets we tackle first.

The civil work (on the public roads) is scheduled to begin between the 6th June 2016 and 13th June 2016. We estimate it will take 3 months to complete but we are hoping it will be quicker as we have learned several lessons from North Marston, which will allow us to move faster with less disruption to yourselves.

Customers of the new network can expect to pay from £30 per month for an unlimited usage 30Mbps service (symmetrical), which rises to £38 if you want a 100Mbps connection or £135 for the top 300Mbps.

The one-off connection fee for the service is £150, although this only works if you’re happy to “self-install” the cable to your property and it will cost a little more if you wish to hire a professional to do the job (AVB’s approved installer charges around £95 for up to 35m of external installation).