BDUK visit Call Flow rollout area in Ropley and Bramdean
On Friday 4th September Chris Townsend, Chief Executive of BDUK, visited the Ropley and Bramdean areas, east of Winchester, which form the £1.2million Innovation Fund Trial in Hampshire. Call Flow will upgrade services for around 1500 premises across the Ropley and Bramdean Exchange areas; 50% of the network is already live, 90% will be able to access services by the end of 2015 with the upgrade due for completion by April 2016.
The Hampshire Superfast Broadband Programme has funds of £28million to increase the commercially funded roll-out of Superfast Broadband from 80% to 95% by 2018. The programme is currently on target to reach 90% superfast coverage by end of 2015. The Innovation Fund Trial has Governmental funding of an additional £1.2million and is backed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). This additional funding provides a boost for the County Council's commitment to ensure that as many of Hampshire's premises receive access to Superfast fibre as possible.
This extra money has been invested in innovative "hybrid" solutions and engineering techniques such as Fixed Wireless Access and Fibre to the Premise (FTTP). This mix of technologies is one of the first of its kind being deployed in the UK. Over 90% of the premises will have fibre optic solutions, with a large amount being FTTP. All the technologies employed will support a 30Mbps service.
Residents and businesses are being encouraged to take advantage of the superfast service that is being installed in an area that would otherwise be in the last 5% of premises unable to access superfast broadband. Call Flow's first cabinet in the area, Bramdean 1, went Live with Superfast Broadband in March 2015, serving premises in and around Cheriton and Hinton Ampner. Cabinets Bramdean 2 and 4 went Live in June covering parts of Cheriton and Bramdean respectively.
Call Flow can be reached at: www.callflowsolutions.com and 0800 280 0590.
