I am increasingly concerned that discussions seem to be focusing around the larger villages and towns  in the county.  I live in Scrub Hill (LN4 4XD), a small hamlet of around 30 houses only around 2 miles outside of Coningsby. Unfortunately our exchange is the opposite side of Coningsby village with the RAF base inbetween. The telephone lines therefore have a round trip of around 3 - 4 miles.  In addition our small hamlet has grown over many years with more and more houses being added.  A couple of years ago we had terrible problems with the telephone lines.  A BT engineer stated that there were too many houses 'piggybacking' on very few, very old lines. He also said that the chances of anyone investing in renewal of the lines was very slim due to there being relatively few houses.  We received a maximum broadband connection of only 250kb, often it is less.  What reassurance can be given to residents such as me that we will not be forgotten.  Also is it not more important that everyone in the county should have a decent standard broadband connection before money is spent to provide fibre-optic broadband to the larger towns and villages who already enjoy the broadband speeds that many of us can only dream of.

We do recognise that some communities are suffering with poor connectivity. However, the Lincolnshire Broadband Plan aims to achieve superfast broadband for 90% of premises in Lincolnshire and a minimum of 2mbps for the remaining 10%. It is the council's intention, though, to continue to seek additional investment to secure universal superfast broadband across the county by 2017.  

I would also strongly recommend that you encourage everyone in your area to register their interest for improved broadband on www.onlincolnshire.org. In June we will be going to procurement and the need to show there is demand for faster broadband will continue to be important. This will help provide potential suppliers with evidence that there is sufficient demand for better broadband provision, and help our negotiation with suppliers. The weekly newsletter that is sent to your email will provide you with more information about the Local Broadband Plan as it becomes available over the next six months.  

There is a leaflet that you can download from the front page of the website that you can use to encourage others to register. However, if it is difficult for you to download due to your low speed, please let us know through the forum and I can contact you directly so we can post you some leaflets. I see that Conningsby has 12 registrations, so maybe this could be a way of getting those numbers up.

Jenny Evans
Onlincolnshire Team

It's not just the smaller villages Martin, here in Caythorpe there are 600 houses the majority of which cannot get above the 2mbps threshold. The exchange is clearly viable (as it's recently been updated to ADSL 2+) yet BT won't update the exchange without the BDUK funding.

What annoys me about the whole BDUK process is that they seem to be scared of awarding the contracts to BT when it's obvious they are the only provider that could deliver super fast broadband to the majority of the county.

People don't really care who provides the infrastructure in a Market 1 exchanges like Fulbeck just that the infrastructure is in place in a relatively realistic timeframe. It's looking like the earliest that a quite large exchange such as Fulbeck will be super fast will be mid 2014. Which I find rather unacceptable.

I agree with much of what you say. We are equally concerned that smaller villages benefit from superfast broadband. Public investment through the Lincolnshire Broadband Plan is expedted to achieve the 90%/10% target.  BT are one of three prime suppliers on the BDUK Framework and we are scheduled to join that process in June/July. Once contracts are awarded in the autumn we will have a much clearer idea of how long it will take to roll out solutions around Lincolnshire.

Wow !! Last night at around 8.00pm my broadband connection dropped.  It came back a few minutes later and I now have almost 1MB download speed.  Now I appreciate that this still modest, however I am used to operating with a quarter of 1MB.   I assume that the recent upgrade at the Coningsby exchange has finally
had some effect.  Thank Goodness !!!

So that was short lived........less than 24hrs later and back to usual with my 250kb or less connection. Can it be right that in this age we have to manage with one quarter of one MB bandwidth.  I had already told my six year old daughter that she could now at long last use the CBBC and other kids websites just like her friends do.  Clearly it is possible to deliver a higher bandwidth, as has now been proved, so why can't this be done now, today, at once ? What was going on with the Coningsby exchange in the past 48hrs which made all the difference.  Does anyone know if it is possible to find out what maintenance if any was being carried out ?   I really need some help in getting to the bottom of this, if anyone has any ideas then I would be grateful if you could let me know.

I live in Ruskington and we had an upgrade at the same time. I live less than a mile away from the exchange and the speed increased from 6 to 9mbps!

I may be that you are too far from the exchange - have you raised this issue with BT?

Martin,

Can you post your line stats here so I can compare them with some of our other customers who are in the nearby vicinity ?

Details on how to do this can be found here:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

Regards,
Terry Froy
Spilsby Internet Solutions

Hi Jenny

Would it be possible for you to send me some of those flyers for my village? I live in Little Hale and this would be the only way to get the awareness out there.,