If you previously registered interest in getting fibre broadband in Ropley, you should have received an email in early January asking you to re-confirm your interest. So far around 300 homes and businesses have responded. If you did not get the email and are interested, please either check your junk email folder or just drop us a note at ropleygigabit@outlook.com telling us you are still interested.
The Project Gigabit invitation to tender for fibre installation in Hampshire (excluding the New Forest) closed on 16th February, shortly after the BMRT press deadline, so by the time you read this we should have a better idea of whether any network provider is interested in installing fibre here.
If any provider has tendered, we then need to wait for Government to evaluate the bids and award a contract – expected between April and June. If no provider has bid then we will request an updated quote from Openreach to install fibre, and hope that we can gather enough registrations for the Project Gigabit £4500 vouchers to meet the quote. Based on the previous Openreach quote we estimate we will need approximately 550 registrations to have enough funding, so we are over half way there already!
If you did not register before, or are a new resident in Ropley and are interested in getting fibre broadband, please drop us an email at ropleygigabit@outlook.com to show your interest.
Watch this space!
Charles Louisson
editor