Make Kent Quicker
KCC is trying to improve Broadband in Kent. Especially in the rural areas, but they need our help. Go to www.makekentquicker.com and register your support.
A significant proportion of residents and businesses in Kent suffer from poor broadband connections, particularly in rural areas.
Even when the broadband connection is of a reasonable speed there is often a huge slow down during peak periods. As I understand it, this is caused by the way BT has enabled rural exchanges. Rather than connect the exchange directly to the internet they connect the rural exchange to the nearest larger town exchange. Often these connections are too small to handle the traffic during peak times, hence the slow down. Who you use as your Internet provider is irrelevant as the equipment in the exchange is BTs and the connection between your house (or business) and the local exchange is fine, it’s the connection further up that is the bottleneck and that is also owned by BT.
Kent County Council has prepared a Local Broadband Plan in order to secure government funding to improve broadband speeds across the county. The target in the plan is that 90 per cent of homes and businesses will have superfast ‘next generation’ broadband access (25 Mbps) by 2015, and the remaining 10 per cent have access to a service of at least 2 Mbps download speeds.
In order to achieve this ambition, investment by broadband providers is needed. The greater the potential demand, the more willing broadband providers will be to invest in high speed infrastructure.
It only takes five minutes to register your demand and it could make a big difference. So please register now at www.makekentquicker.com , and encourage your neighbours, friends and business networks to do the same.
What are BT and other providers doing?
In December 2011 BT announced that a further 86,000 Kent homes and businesses will have access to faster broadband by the summer of 2012. Further information on the rollout and individual homes/businesses to benefit can be obtained from the BT Openreach website: www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when
If your exchange is not currently listed as due for an upgrade to next generation broadband, you can however also register your interest in an improved broadband service direct with BT, similar to the Make Kent Quicker campaign. Residents and businesses are encouraged to complete both. To register, visit the BT Openreach website: www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/expression-gen.aspx
BT and other providers are expected to continue to upgrade services but in isolated pockets or in areas where commercial viability is an issue, this may not happen – which is where the Make Kent Quicker campaign comes in!
If you have a topic you would like me to cover, please let me know.
Mick Maidens is the Owner of Kent PCs for Computer Repairs in Challock (Nr Ashford).
Email: info@kentpcs.co.uk Phone: 01233 740306