We are helping residents of Panshanger Campaign for Fast Broadband.

There is ray of hope in that Liberty Group who have recently (End 2014) acquired Virgin Media announced this week (Feb 2015) that they will be spending more money on filling in the Gaps in their network.

When, at a St Albans Chamber event,  we asked Ed Vaisey the Minister in charge of broadband, back in September 2014, he said that BT were then only game in town, So this is Refreshing news. Competition Brings Results.

Where and When remains unclear. Please contact Paul Osgood on 07479 955787 to join the Broadband Campaign.

 

The State of Play in the Broadband Market

 

Broadband – it’s all about bandwidth, which delivers the speed and reliability both consumers and business are increasingly looking for to make the most of Digital

The current data transfer protocol Docsys3 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) not only meets today’s speed requirements but for relatively small additional investment has capability to be upgraded.

Mobile companies are looking to take advantage of this data bandwidth by transferring their signals from air to cable as quickly as possible.

Some mobile companies are choosing to buy cable operators to get control of the cable network, eg Vodafone Last September Vodafone sold its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless for a cool US$130 billion. There is clearly cash available for acquisition.

So access to fast broadband is increasingly important for your business and your home for your children’s education. We are fast developing a two tier society of the haves and have not’s in the broadband stakes. This is clearly a critical social and economic issue.

Also the situation has just got worse. In the UK there are three main players SKY who use BT for cable, BT themselves and Virgin Media. Virgin Media have just been bought by an American organisation Liberty who have just announced that they will not be investing any further in Cable in the ground. It should be remembered that both NTL and Telewest ran into difficulties putting cable in the ground and were merged to form Virgin Media

Here are two useful websites, the first showing BT’s cable installation program by post code http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/

The second showing the available broadband packages by post code

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

The Strategic point is that in 21st century scale is critical to future of the communications industry. A standalone Virgin Media would not have succeeded. So managing the operators as globalisation takes place is the real challenge

 

Local Broadband availability

The bottom line is that Hatfield is pretty well covered but the North of Welwyn Garden City is far more sketchy with Knebworth Area “Coming Soon” but in the North East and North West areas there are “No Current Plans” Please see Map below.

You can go to http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/ and type in postcodes to check out the current status also for “Coming Soon” you can get a twitter link to keep you informed of progress.

AO Accepting Orders. CS Coming soon, you can download a pdf of exchanges from this site

FE Future Exchanges. UE Under Evaluation. NC No Current plans

Once you have identified availability you can investigate who supplies which packages on

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

Remember to check with Virgin Media also.