Madeley Village – Fibre Broadband Update!

Superfast Staffordshire

You might have spotted new BT green cabinets in various places around the village, often right next to existing cabinets.  These are the upgrade that’s going on to bring Fibre Broadband to everyone! Update information follows here!

If you had broadband before now it will have been “ADSL”. The internet connection came to the BT Exchange on Furnace lane, and your phone line may be several kilometres of wire to connect back to that.  The longer the wire, the lower the speed you get. At best you might get 24Mbps (megabits per second) but realistically you might get 5-10Mbps, which is enough to watch a youtube video or have a skype call, but not enough for everyone in a home to use at the same time.

The latest broadband is called “Fibre To The Cabinet” (FTTC) which means that an optic fibre brings the data connection right to the cabinet that is hopefully much nearer your home, and so the very last bit over wires might be only a few hundred metres, which means much higher data speeds. If you’re reasonably close to the cabinet, you could get speeds up to 80Mbps, though more likely 50Mbps, but that’s more than enough for everyone to be using the internet at the same time, and even better – the optic fibre is effectively unlimited in how much it can carry, so you’re not having to share the total with everyone else in the same area.

There are 8 cabinets serving Madeley, their statuses are :

Madeley Cabinet 1: (The Coach House, The Holborn) : Live!

Madeley Cabinet 2: (Moss Lane): Live!

Madeley Cabinet 3: (Monument View, Crewe Rd, Madeley Heath): Live!

Madeley Cabinet 4: (New Road / Greenmeadows Road) :  Coming soon (by April 2016)

Madeley Cabinet 5: ( Morningside ): Live!

Madeley Cabinet 6: ( Last Few Direct Connections! ): Coming later (2016/2017) 

Madeley Cabinet 7: ( Bevan Place ): Live!

Madeley Cabinet 8: (Beck Road/Salisbury Close): Live!

If your cabinet is showing as live (it’ll be the one you’re closest to), then you should already be able to order Fibre Broadband from BT or any of the other internet providers.

The details for this are all available at http://www.superfaststaffordshire.co.uk/ – along with lots of other news and updates.

They have very helpfully explained that the last “cabinet” for Madeley – Cabinet 6 – is not actually a cabinet but is the connections for the remaining local premises, and these are more complex ones with lots of extra engineering works required (that usually means having to make new ducts for cables, or running them overhead), but that it will be providing FTTP – Fibre To The Premises, so while it might take a bit longer it’s worth the wait as that’s the best possible type of connection to have.

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