Belper Broadband information ............. Digital Derbyshire

Following a comment made at the 1st Infrastructure Public Consultation meeting held at Strutts last month,  that poor broadband speed in Belper had resulted in some businesses being deterred from locating in the town, enquiries have been made to ascertain to what extent this is true. Of course it is nigh on impossible to know what businesses have been deterred but it is possible to tabulate the availability of high speed broadband in any given Belper address.

First we approached Derbyshire County Council which resulted in a visit from the Digital Derbyshire team, first for a briefing direct to NP4B followed by a briefing at a Transition Belper workshop evening. We learnt the following:

Digital Derbyshire

Digital Derbyshire is delivering the county's biggest ever broadband transformation. Derbyshire County Council is working in partnership with BT to lay hundreds of miles of fibre optic cable, bringing better, faster broadband to parts of Derbyshire.

The Digital Derbyshire programme is providing fibre services to communities by primarily upgrading existing BT cabinets in areas that currently cannot receive fibre services, and involves installing a dedicated fibre cabinet in close proximity to the existing copper cabinets, with enhanced broadband services being provided through a mixture of fibre and copper technology. The copper element involves using existing infrastructure (underground or via telephone poles) between the cabinet and the property. This technology is commonly referred to as Fibre to the Cabinet or FTTC.

So far, a total of eighteen green roadside cabinets containing the fibre connection have gone live in the Belper area as part of the Digital Derbyshire programme. This is in addition to the commercial coverage which already exists for some homes and businesses in the area. This means that many residents can now order fibre broadband from an internet service provider (ISP) of their choice (see map below for where the cabinets are located).

Digital Derbyshire is a circa £34 million programme which is split over two contracts; contract one until the end of September 2016, then contract two until the end of 2018. The funding breakdown is as follows:

£15.2m - BT

£5.0m – Derbyshire County Council

£9.7m – Broadband Delivery UK

£2.5m – European Regional Development Fund

£2.2m  - D2N2 LEP

This is the Digital Derbyshire link

This is the Digital Derbyshire presentation prepared for NP4B

Following contact with Digital Derbyshire it has been possible to create a document that lists the broadband potential of all Belper postcodes. From this it is possible to have an overview of how the work of upgrading the town is progressing. The following link lists all Belper postcodes and shows the progress made in connecting the street cabinet to which your house or business is connected by copper wire.

List of fibre enabled locations in Belper by postcode

Belper Fibre-Optic connected cabinets (as at May 2016)

To check your own address

Belper telephone cabinets are gradually being connected to the exchange via fibre optic cables. This makes it possible for higher broadband speeds to be available. You can check your speed potential here: Broadband Download Times by typing in your postcode.

Conclusion

There are still some locations in the town where broadband speeds are yet to be improved but the work carried out so far is encouraging. Speeds of up to 76 Mb are now being offered which would seem adequate for most business requirements. Digital Derbyshire have requested that comments regarding issues of poor performance should be addressed to them but of course we here at NP4B are also interested.