Wilstone and Long Marston Rural Broadband Rollout

There is understandable impatience to the late introduction of broadband to the rural parts of the UK. Two months ago local Liberal Democrat county councillor, Nick Hollinghurst, was at a meeting when Microsoft's UK Director of Media & Communication referred to the "Great British Broadband Problem". However a massive extension programme costing nearly £2 billion and with funding shared between the government, the EU, industry and local authorities continues to make progress in providing connections free of charge to the householder.

Locally, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire County Councils are managing this process via a consortium called "Connected Counties". A Second Rural Rollout Contract was signed in June and is being implemented. Because the first contract proceeded faster and at lower cost than expected it was possible to persuade the Treasury to agree to the unspent funds from Contract 1 being rolled over and added to Contract 2. In the eighteenth century world of Treasury accounting this was a first!

So this has resulted in the "acceleration" of Contract 2. Each of the four phases of the contract have been brought forward by 6 months.

Phase 1 runs from now to March 2017,

Phase 2 runs from June 2016 to September 2017,

Phase 3 runs from January 2017 to March 2018 and

Phase 4 runs from June 2017 to June 2018.

But first a reminder... This rollout programme was never designed to provide more than 95% connection to "superfast broadband" (50Mbps to 100 Mbps or more) at public expense and the original commitment for "superfast" was 24 Mbps. It was, however, always intended to provide "basic broadband" (2 Mbps) to everybody - and this will be done".

Nevertheless targets in terms of coverage and speeds have been consistently exceeded and Hertfordshire is expecting to achieve a connection of greater than 97%. A few households might end up with speeds between 20 Mbps and 50 Mbps and with a small handful of very remote premises only able to be supplied with the very basic connection under this scheme. This very much depends on geography and historical connection architecture.

Wilstone

Most of the village will be connected in Phase 3, apart from a very few in Phase 2. A handful of isolated properties however may not receive a physical broadband connection but will be offered basic broadband via a satellite dish.

Long Marston

Nearly all of Long Marston will be connected in Phase 1, apart from a very few in Phase 3. However, not every property in Puttenham and Astrope, nor 3 properties in Gubblecote can be physically connected and will be offered basic broadband as above.

You can check your postcode by searching on the Connected Counties website or by inspecting the list on by clicking here. Please note this list is in alphanumeric order, not in numeric order. (e.g. "HP23" comes after "HP2" and before "HP3")