Spring 2021
With £185,000 grant aid from the UK government we will be connecting 50 rural businesses and 90 residences to gigabit fibre-to-the-premises broadband in the coming months. Beacuse we are a not-for-profit organisation, the connections are accounted for in the grants available and the costs of fibre cable laying and connections. There are about 16km of cable to lay.
The areas being covered are the whole of the villages of Wappenham and Slapton and farms and businesses within 4kms.
Abthorpe Broadband Association project manages this work and uses local contractors where at all possible.
The infrastructure cables are rodent proof 9mm corrugated steel armoured outer containing a loose tube of 12 fibre-optic strands. Any strain on the outer tube should not damage the fibres - at least that's the theory. We bury the cable between 0.5 and 1.0m deep depending upon the ground use and sometimes more for special circumstances. With 3" of soil pushed back over the cable, we lay a green tape, then re-fill the trench, finally seeding the surface. It is generally not possible to see where we have been within 4 months of the construction. At strategic points we construct an inspection chamber which eventually contains fibre junctions and feeds to properties.
We have a variation of cables availble to feed the properties from thin tuff cables to water pipes containing fibre cables.