People living and working in Oddingley, a village approximately 5 miles north-east of Worcester, are getting access to ultrafast fibre broadband for the first time thanks to the Superfast Worcestershire partnership spearheaded by Worcestershire County Council, BT, the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme and Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership.
The technology the partnership is deploying in this particular area of the county is Fibre to the Premises technology, which means a fibre cable runs directly from the telephone exchange to a property.
There are lots of different challenges that the partnership face as part of its drive to bring fibre broadband to some of the county’s more remote communities. Over-hanging trees is one of the more sensitive issues that Openreach – the network provider – has to deal with whilst working to bring the technology to Oddingley, working with their contractor Carillion Telent.
First of all they need to undertake surveys to evaluate what, if any, trees need to be trimmed. Any pruning or lopping requires the full permission of the landowner before any work can go ahead.
Other considerations when rolling out the technology include: possible access to private land, co-ordinating engineering work with key harvesting and planting periods, and, increasingly, working in narrow rural roads, which might require road closures to get the job done.
If you live in Oddingley and would like to be kept updated on the Superfast Worcestershire roll-out, please register your interest here. The work currently being undertaken in Oddingley will enable households and businesses served by structure V35 on Droitwich telephone exchange to access ultrafast fibre broadband.
Follow the progress of this structure on the Superfast Worcestershire website.
Pictured: Carillion Telent project manager, Jon Linnane, surveys the area for Broadband connectivity