PROJECT BROADBAND – it’s time…

Superfast Broadband for Knapton image

PROJECT BROADBAND is a Parish Council led initiative to remove the disparity of broadband performance throughout the parish by giving every household the opportunity to have a full fibre broadband solution direct to their home.

We want every resident in our parish to have the choice of having a broadband service that offers a healthy degree of future proofing and meets the changing needs of their daily lives by removing the inconsistency of the “location lottery” which dictates how good – or bad – their broadband service is.

We have created dedicated web pages for both here on the site with a view to presenting a balanced comparison and we’d love to have your input.

  • Around a year ago we contacted OpenReach to research the possibility of setting up a Parish Partnership Scheme and found ourselves having to register resident’s interest before we could even apply for the scheme.
  • In OctoberCounty Broadband contacted our Chairman and have already started to canvas our resident’s interest.

let us know your thoughts

If you would like to share your thoughts or perhaps show your support for our efforts to improve the broadband services in our village, simply click the button below to open our Contact Form and choose Broadband Project from the Subject list.
Alternatively you can be more specific and select BT or County Broadband (they’re listed together to make it easy)

life is different now…

Our lives have been very different since Covid-19 hit us like a runaway express train.
Lifetime habits have changed with more people working from home, children doing their schooling on-line and the freedom to come and go as we please well and truly curtailed to be replaced by Zoom meetings and on-line shopping.

For some, the Internet provides the only communication with family and friends in the outside world using FaceTime, WhatsApp, Zoom or Teams, and more time at home has meant greater reliance on the internet for TV entertainment and online gaming.

The truth is, we’re all doing a lot more online and becoming more and more dependent on the Internet, with simultaneous demands of uploading and downloading large files, streaming TV services, video and music and playing online with gaming consoles, with almost stealth-like growth in online CCTV, heating controls, fire & smoke alarms and a whole host of other gadgets designed to make our lives that little bit easier and safer, constantly logged on at the same time.

And yet we are expecting our broadband to cope without considering the extra load we have heaped onto it

The reality isto do what we now want to do probably requires faster internet connections that have greater bandwidth to cope with everything, which is a challenge in our rural environment.

an essential service…

Broadband has become an essential service, almost without us noticing, as we video call family and friends, stream TV, play on-line and connect our smart services for both convenience and pleasure.

  • Large households
    If your household has three or more internet users, broadband needs the bandwidth to comfortably cope with everyone going online at once. To connect all your computers, smartphones, tablets, TV set-top boxes, games consoles, and smart appliances at the same time
  • Video streaming
    Faster broadband means less buffering when you’re streaming catch-up TV, Netflix, or iPlayer, not to mention quicker loading time for HD and 4K videos
  • Gaming
    Fibre optic broadband has less lag (latency) and faster uploads, making it perfect for online gaming and using gaming consoles like Xbox
  • VoIP and video calling
    For Zoom and Skype users, a fibre connection makes everything better with fewer dropped calls, smoother video, clearer sound, and less delay
  • Big downloads
    Superfast broadband whittles your downloading time down to mere minutes – or seconds, in some cases. For example, a music album only takes about 30 seconds to download on a 76Mb connection
our Chairman says…
why are fibre cables better than copper?

I think it’s about time that we tried to address the inconsistent quality of the broadband service across the parish so that all parishioners can enjoy the benefits that superfast broadband offers and not just those who, by luck or judgement, happen to live near BTs green cabinet.

Peter Neatherway
Chair | Knapton Parish Council 

do you already have fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband?

Wouldn’t you just know it… there’s more than one type of fibre broadband!

Those of us in Knapton lucky enough to have fibre broadband have a service called FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet).

As the name suggests, FTTC is a blend of fibre and copper, which uses fibre optic cables from the BT Exchange to the green BT street cabinet (which is located next to the village sign at the Hall Lane / Knapton Road junction) and then uses your copper telephone line (known as a PSTN line), to make the connection from the cabinet to your home.

Unfortunately, copper wire loses signal strength over distance, which is why the quality of service that you actually receive depends largely on how far from the BT cabinet you live.

Simply put, copper cables are not very efficient. They’re slow and the signal they carry degrades the further it has to travel. This means that your broadband speed will be directly affected by how much copper cable is used in your connection.   So the further you live from BT’s green cabinet, the slower and less reliable your connection will be.

Fibre is inherently more reliable than copper and is less susceptible to adverse weather conditions, so it can carry data at much faster speeds over far greater distances

fibre optic lamp image

Fibre optic broadband cables are exactly the same kind of fibre optics that you find in fibre optic lamps

The cables that deliver fibre broadband can include up to 864 fibre optic tubes, each about as thick as a human hair and 100% reflective on the inside.   Information is transferred by sending flashes (or pulses) of light through the tubes which bounce off the inner walls to travel along the cable, to computers, smart phones, tablets or data centres at the receiving end which then interpret the flashes as data.

And because the speed of light is pretty fast, you get a lightning-quick broadband connection that can deliver data at rates thousands of times faster than copper cables to give you superfast speeds with enough bandwidth to get loads of gadgets online at once.

OK, so what are FTTP and FTTH?

FTTP (Fibre to the Premise) & FTTH (Fibre to the Home)
These are essentially the same thing, but the term FTTP is used as an umbrella term, which includes both non-residential and residential premises.

FTTP is a pure fibre optic delivery method and is known by different names from different providers.   OpenReach call it Ultrafast Full Fibre Broadband.   County Broadband call it Real Full Fibre Broadband

Instead of using an existing copper cable for the ‘last mile’ of access, it completely bypasses the traditional copper telephone wire with a pure fibre optic cable connected all the way from the exchange to the premises.
Because this method of internet connection only uses fibre optic cable, it is inherently more reliable than copper and can carry data at much faster speeds over far greater distances.   Typically providing bandwidths of up to 330Mbps for downloads and 30Mbps for uploads, 1Gbps is achievable.

Knapton Broadband Flyer
…but I’m in already in a contract

Whilst contractual ties may dictate when residents can change, we feel that it’s important for us to investigate the possibilities for improvement for the parish as a whole and to be able to offer an alternative to every resident when the time is right.

< < < click on the image on the left to see our flyer

the County Broadband answer…

County Broadband demonstrate their market experience here because once their service is installed, they provide it to you free for up to twelve months or whenever your existing contract ends, whichever comes first.
So there’s no early settlement fees to your existing provider and you’re only ever paying for one service, even though you’d actually be receiving both during that time.