Ultrafast broadband

Bellingdon Full Fibre Broadband Update

~ bacaadmin

Hi all, I’m delighted to announce that Openreach have finally completed the Bellingdon Two Gates Full Fibre broadband project and you (129 households) should be able to place orders with your Service Provider of choice (it may take a couple of days to trickle through to some Service Provider ordering systems – Vodafone and Talktalk are lagging behind for example). 

If you are currently locked in a contract, your supplier will allow you to upgrade but they will restart the contract term. I have found that the best policy is to call them, threaten to leave (regardless of contract penalties) and they will put you through to the ‘contract retention team’ who are able to negotiate a deal and will usually match competitive offers in order to retain your business. 

Here’s a sample of the best deals I’ve been able to find at the time of writing – It seems there are two clear frontrunners! (data sourced from broadbandchoices.co.uk, moneysupermarket.com, comparethemarket.com)

Provider Speed (Mb) Price Product Name
Plusnet 74 £24.99 Full Fibre 74
Vodafone 100 £25.00 Superfast 100
Plusnet 145 £29.99 Full Fibre 145
Vodafone 500 £35.00 Ultrafast 500
Vodafone 910 £38.00 Gigafast 900

All the best and good luck in getting those deals!!

Tony Orr, on behalf of BAACA

Ultrafast broadband update 3/2/22

~ bacaadmin

In recent months you may have noticed the activity in the village regarding the installation of Gigabit Broadband. There have been many Openreach engineer visits and fibre has now been ‘pulled’ from the main cabinets through ducts and to the main poles carrying the existing telephony/internet services across Bellingdon.

Against this background you may, like us, have been rather surprised to have recently received an email from DCMS suggesting that your Gigabit Internet Voucher will be expiring soon. We were all looking forward to the ‘release’ of the new fibre network to service providers (e.g. BT, Sky, Talk Talk) in May enabling us all to order the new high speed service.

Tony Orr has this morning been in correspondence with Openreach who have advised that the sending of this email is an administrative process that they cannot control, but that we should not be concerned at this stage and there is no action that residents need to take. We have been promised an update ‘at the earliest opportunity on any remedial steps required if any’. We will be in touch again when we have more information.

Hugh Griffiths

BAACA (Bellingdon and Asheridge Community Association) Trustee
On behalf of BAACA

Summer news

~ bacaadmin

Printed newsletters will be delivered to all houses in Bellingdon & Asheridge over the next few days by our wonderful team of volunteers. If you can’t wait (!) or prefer your news online we’ll be posting the individual articles on the website plus more that we couldn’t fit in. We’ll also send out a newsletter this month after a few months’ hiatus which will contain broadly the same content.

BAACA AGM 

The Community Association AGM will be on 13th July at 8pm. This year we’re hoping to go “hybrid”; that is have the option to be in the hall or to log in remotely via zoom for those who are unable to be there in person. 

Every adult resident of Bellingdon & Asheridge is entitled to vote at the meeting, there’s no obligation to get involved (turning up doesn’t mean you’ll get lumbered with organising next year’s fete; unless you want to of course!) and its your annual opportunity to find out what BAACA has been doing, both to maintain and improve the hall and to foster a sense of community. Plus there will be drinks and nibbles! 

Hall reopening according to government guidelines

As restrictions gradually lift, we are able to reopen more and more of the village facilities. The recreation ground, car park and playground are open already, during the daytime. Huge thanks to the team who give up their time to be on the gate opening/closing rota. The hall is accepting bookings in line with the guidance at the time. If you’d like to find out more or book the hall please see our dedicated pages on the village website. 

Fete update

Given the proximity of the intended fete date (26th June) to the full easing of restrictions (21st June) the committee, after much discussion, felt it would be too risky to proceed with the fete in June. Plans are in progress for a scaled-back community event on 11th September, which the committee feels gives us the best chance of actually being able to run something. Stay tuned for more information or to volunteer to help please get in touch.

Ultrafast Broadband
You may be wondering what happened to the promise of Ultrafast Broadband. Well the wheels grind extremely slowly but we’re hopeful to be able to share good news by the time of our next newsletter (early September). Please cross your fingers and toes… 

Help please!

And finally, if you’ve ever thought you could do a better newsletter (printed or e-news)…now is your chance. The current editor has been in post for five years and would be delighted to hand over the reins. Help also sought with the website and associated social media. Some experience would be an asset. 

Please get in touch if you’d like to know more – all and any help appreciated to make this a really useful resource for our community. 

Ultrafast broadband: Last day to pledge/confirm!

~ bacaadmin

Today (31st March) is the last day you can pledge/confirm your voucher for the ultrafast broadband project.

We’re currently at 80% so it’s not looking good, but openreach tell us we have £45,000 of vouchers that have been pledged but not confirmed.

For the project to go ahead the difference would need to be made up by the community so we’ll be in touch when we know how much that figure is.

In the meantime please PLEDGE or CONFIRM your voucher (links go to step by step instructions) TODAY!

Keep in touch
General e-News: http://eepurl.com/dlWkLH
Ultrafast broadband project news ONLY: http://eepurl.com/bUdAdH
www: www.bellingdon.com
f: www.facebook.com/bavhall
t: www.twitter.com/bellandash
Bellingdon & Asheridge Community Association
Registered Charity No: 1087494

Ultrafast broadband update 28 March ACTION NEEDED

~ bacaadmin

Just a quick update on the status of the “Two Gates Lane/Bellingdon” Ultrafast community project (not to be confused with the “Cholesbury/The Lee/Asheridge etc” project that you may have seen discussed on the Grapevine.

  • If you have not yet PLEDGED your voucher please do so ASAP – time is running out! Instructions on how to pledge (with pictures) are here.
  • Once you’ve pledged you should receive an email from gigabit.vouchers@notifications.service.gov.uk to CONFIRM your voucher. This locks in the funding and is VITAL. There are instructions (with pictures) on how to do this here.
  • If you have pledged and confirmed your voucher, thank you, there’s nothing more for you to do at the moment. Please don’t pledge again if you’ve already done it – duplicates are deleted.

Even if you’re happy with your broadband speeds, please spare a thought for your neighbours who might not have as good a connection as you and/or consider the value that ultrafast broadband might add to your property.

Some background information

After 6 months of back and forth, for which we have Tony Orr’s unending patience to thank, the project was initially costed, from afar, by Openreach, on a certain number of properties – a good number of which were either non-existent or duplicated.

This led to an extremely high initial cost for the project. Subsequently Openreach removed a number of the properties from the project scope, but did not have time to re-cost the project before the funding window ends – 31st March.

This leaves us in a situation where we need everybody who can sign up to do so. The additional funding we were hoping for from Bucks council has all been allocated, and the pot is empty.

The bottom line is, we are currently over £50,000 short, more if you count those who have pledged but not confirmed their vouchers.

So please, pledge and/or confirm your voucher as soon as you can. It could just make the difference.

https://www.openreach.com/connectmycommunity