Bobbington villagers urged to seize chance to secure ultrafast broadband

It has now reached more than 100,000 homes and businesses across Staffordshire with full fibre.

The company is warning that the community in the South Staffordshire village risks missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime full fibre upgrade, if they don’t apply for free Government broadband vouchers. Once they have them, they can be used to secure faster speeds and greater reliability.

Funding through the Governments Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the deployment of new broadband signal boosting technology – which can extend the reach of the full fibre network – means thousands more remote rural communities are now within reach of the ultrafast technology.

Openreach identified Bobbington as being a strong contender for full fibre and is urging local people to take the next step by applying for and pooling together the free vouchers to help fund the build.

Residents can check if they qualify and pledge their voucher on the Connect My Community website.

Using the vouchers – which don’t cost residents anything, enables Openreach to work with a local community to build a customised, co-funded network. The vouchers can be combined to extend the ultrafast network to premises in outlying rural areas which won’t be covered by private investment.

Kasam Hussain, Openreach’s partnership director for the Midlands, said: “This is an exciting opportunity for the people of Bobbington to bring all the benefits of ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to their community.

“Our Fibre Community Partnership programme has meant that we’ve been able to potentially bring hundreds more communities across the UK, into our full fibre build plans. But building out the network to these harder to reach locations is still challenging – which is why it’s only possible with everyone working together – you, your neighbours and Openreach.

“Everyone who pledges a voucher will be doing their bit to help make Bobbington one of the best-connected places in the UK.

“We’re investing £15 billion to build full fibre broadband to 25 million homes – and more than six million of those will be in the toughest third of the UK – but we can’t upgrade the whole country alone. This latest support from government is a vital part of that process.”

Once the pledge target for the scheme is reached, residents need to ensure they then validate their vouchers with the Government so that Openreach can confirm that building work can get underway. As part of the funding conditions residents are asked to commit to ordering a full fibre service from a provider of their choice for at least 12 months once the new network is available and confirm they are connected.