Cabinet
Village residents may have noticed that the ‘world wide wait‘ for the completion of the Gigaclear Ultra Fast Broadband network took a step closer this week, with the installation of the village cabinet (shown above) on Charlton Road on 10 September. The cabinet will act as the ‘local exchange’ for the village and will link up with the ‘backhaul’ to connect us to the internet. It should be connected to mains electricity at the start of October.
Live Date
The important issue for residents will be when can we expect a live network? Gigaclear is dependant on Vodafone providing the backhaul connection to the village. We were informed initially that Vodafone thought that they had sufficient network capacity for the villages of Croughton & Aynho – however this now appears not to be the case, and so they are in the process of upgrading the optic fibre connection to the village. As a result, Gigaclear expect to be able to make the first live connections in early November. Gigaclear are forecasting that the network build will be complete by December.
Road Closure Blacksmith’s Hill
Gigaclear have applied for a formal road closure to complete the works required at the bottom of Blacksmith’s Hill. They have done this following an objection from local residents. As the notice will take some eight weeks to come into effect – mid November – it will mean that if the village has a live connection in October, the residents of College Fields, Banbury & Charlton Roads & The Hill will have to wait for the Blacksmith’s Hill section of the network to be completed before a live connection can be made available.
Boxcom
Boxcom have also now returned to the village – Boxcom is the firm who will make all the individual house connections. In the next few weeks they will be making the connections in the cabinet and will then test the quality of the connection from the cabinet to individual properties. This work can be undertaken before there is a live feed to the village. These tests are important as there are concerns about some of the quality of the work of the previous Gigaclear contractor, which may need to be rectified.