BT Deal Means 300 New Homes in Market Harborough to Get FTTC Broadband

Residents of the Farndon Fields Development in Market Harborough (Leicestershire), many of whom have been forced to suffer slow ADSL2+ broadband speeds despite owning new build homes, look set to gain access to 80Mbps capable FTTC “fibre broadband” thanks to a new co-funded deal with BT.

Nearly 300 new-ish build properties look set to benefit from the co-funded deal with BT (Openreach) after local residents clubbed together with CJC Developments, the developer who built Farndon Fields some 5 years ago.

As a result of the effort enough money has been raised (we’re not told how much this will all cost) in order to co-fund the build of a new FTTC street cabinet by Autumn 2017, which will be achieved via one of BT’s Community Fibre Partnerships.

We should point out that the situation in 2011/12, when the houses were first being built, was rather different from what it is today and back then there wasn’t much in the way of “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) connectivity around and Openreach (BT) had only just begun to roll-out Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology. Meanwhile the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme was still being setup.

Richard Kyle, Community Campaigner for Farndon Fields, said:

“We are really looking forward to being able to connect to fibre broadband. It will make a huge difference to the residents, especially those working from home and with children in the house.

Being able to benefit from faster download speeds becomes more important as more home devices connect to the internet and so many things are accessed or delivered online. This will benefit people of all ages.”

So far BT’s “Community Fibre Partnerships” have helped to expand their FTTC/P network coverage to an additional 90+ communities (18,000 premises passed), which is expected to reach 35,000 premises passed once the next round of related contracts in other parts of the United Kingdom have been finalised and completed.

However it’s a shame that residents had to raise the money themselves, particularly as the area appears to be fairly urban and should have perhaps been covered as part of the second Superfast Leicestershire contract instead (details), had the local authority desired to do so.