New cabinet in Wansford

Excitement ! A new street cabinet (PCP) has been installed in Wansford very close to the telephone exchange. This will be to provide an intercept point for lines currently fed direct from the exchange, thereby enabling connection to a Superfast (FTTC) broadband cabinet which is yet to appear.

The new cabinet on Old North Road is shown in the first photo below. The second photo (I need to try harder with that one) shows the new FTTC cabinet installed in Nassington which will be fed from the Wansford exchange. So we are going to see speeds up to 80 Mbit/s becoming available soon in our area.

Meanwhile, Kingscliffe and Apethorpe are edging towards a full Fibre to the Home (FTTH) service offering symmetrical speeds up to 1 Gbit/s. The area has been split in two as the new Persimmon estate is apparently off-limits for digging for 12 months and Persimmon are declining to engage with Gigaclear. The "old village" and Apethorpe are 80% of the way to the required minimum connections, the area including the new build is floundering at 30%.

Gigaclear activity in the area

Just an update post, nothing concrete happening on the ground in Wansford but it's interesting to see that Gigaclear are pitching an up to 1 Gbit/s "fibre to the home" service in Kingscliffe and Apethorpe.

As the Northants BDUK project didn't propose an upgrade for that area, and unlike Wansford they have only BT's first generation 8M broadband with no Talk Talk or Sky equipment, the area should be an attractive market.

Gigaclear work on the basis of getting 30 or 40% of a population signed up before the project starts, to give them a viable project. They are also pitching in villages around Peterborough where they will use a connection to the Peterborough Core fibre project for their onward connection to the internet.

The Kingscliffe project may well get its fibre feed from Wansford where there is a fibre interconnect in the telephone exchange.


At the time of writing Kingscliffe has just over 40% of the required commitments to Gigaclear.