The publicly funded Aylesbury Vale Broadband project has this week started the next phase of expansion in rural Buckinghamshire (England), which will expand their 300Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH/P) network to the villages of Oving and Stewkley.
At present the new network, which is supported by £700,000 of public investment from the local Aylesbury Vale District Council (AVDC), has already managed to deploy its fibre optic broadband to the three lucky villages of Granborough, North Marston and Swanbourne.
However AVB has now confirmed that work is scheduled to start on the roads in Stewkley from Thursday 1st December 2016, while similar work will commence for Oving on Monday 5th December and in both cases the deployment phase should take roughly 3 months to complete. We’re also expecting Drayton Parslow to follow, but that’s still in the planning phase.
Stewkley is home to around 1,840 people and AVB required 100 households in the area to pay a £20 deposit before they could commence. Meanwhile Oving is a much smaller village (478 people) and AVB required 30% of the area (equivalent of 67 households) to pay the same deposit before they could start work.
AVB Statement
“We apologise for the disruptions/inconveniences this may cause while the work is underway but hopefully you are looking forward to the ultra-fast broadband speeds you will soon receive.”
Customers of the new network typically pay from £30 per month for an unlimited 30Mbps (symmetrical) service, which rises to £38 if you want 100Mbps or £135 for the fastest 300Mbps package. A one-off connection fee of £150 also applies via the self-install method, but locals may have to pay more if they want it all to be professionally installed.
Mind you it’s worth pointing out that AVB originally hoped to have reached a total of 10 villages by the end of 2016 and they’ve now fallen a little bit shy of that aspiration, although such delays are not uncommon where complex civil works and investment are involved (not to mention the impact of Autumn / Winter weather).
On top of that AVB has faced pressure from a local wireless network and a related competition probe by the European Commission (here), which has been examining the project’s use of state aid. Not that any of this has been bothering the locals too much, many of whom have welcomed the arrival of fibre optic cables that can finally drag them out of Openreach’s (BT) slow copper broadband age.
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