Shropshire residents urged to back Full Fibre broadband bids

By applying for free UK Government broadband vouchers the communities can secure the new technology and start enjoying the benefits in the next 12-18 months. 

Funding through the Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the deployment of innovative engineering techniques means thousands more remote, rural and coastal communities like Clee Hill, Little Brampton, Lydbury North, Cressage, Claverley, Morville, Norton, Uppington, Quatt and Worfield are now within reach of the technology. 

Openreach has identified homes and businesses in these areas as being within scope for full fibre and is urging local people to take the next step by applying for and pooling together free Government Gigabit Vouchers to help fund the build.

Residents can check if they qualify and pledge their voucher on the Connect My Community website. Using the vouchers – which don’t cost residents anything - enables Openreach to work with a local community to build a customised, co-funded network. 

Once enough people pledge and validate their vouchers, Openreach engineers will start the build. This can take up to 12-18 months, and some properties may go live before others. 

Martin Williams, Partnership Director for Shropshire, said: “This is a really exciting opportunity for the people of these villages to bring all the benefits of ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to their community. 

“Our Fibre Community Partnership programme has meant that we’ve been able to bring hundreds more communities across the UK into our full fibre build plans. But building out the network to these harder to reach locations is still challenging, which is why its only possible with everyone working together – you, your neighbours and Openreach. 

“Everyone who pledges a voucher will be doing their bit to help make these areas among the best-connected places in the UK.”

Once the pledge target for the scheme is reached, residents need to ensure they then validate their vouchers with the Government so that Openreach can confirm that building work can get underway. As part of the funding conditions residents are asked to commit to ordering a full fibre service from a provider of their choice for at least 12 months once the new network is available, and confirm that they are connected. 

Full fibre technology provides more reliable, resilient and future-proof connectivity; meaning fewer faults; more predictable, consistent speeds and enough capacity to easily meet growing data demands. It's also future-proof, which means it will serve generations to come and won’t need to be upgraded for decades.

You can find out more about the benefits of an upgrade to Full Fibre broadband on the Openreach website.