The new fibre build is fully completed!!

The build is fully completed. So we now have a fully fibre optic village! To get there we've had to..

• Collected enough registrations
• Registered enough vouchers
• Raised more than necessary government grant
• Openreach has agreed the build with no contract necessary
• Engineers have surveyed the village
• Engineers have installed the fibre cable!!
• Cabling was tested with most roads now fully completed!
• All houses have now got full fibre available including testing

After all the hard work with collecting registrations and vouchers, Openreach have now completed all the work to bring the village online with full fibre!

The Latest Developments (10th January 2023)

In a strange turn of events, we had a phone call from the CEO of OpenReach towards the middle of last year after launching a complaint about the way the project management had been handled to date. He apologised for the confusion and delays of the Westerleigh fibre project and pass it on to a team who is now cleared up what is happening. The majority of issues was simply due to poor communications from the project team, but that was evntually resolved. A few houses along the northern side of Westerleigh Road, around the rail bridge and out towards Yate, were the last to get activated after extensive additional development was required by a number of different organisations include network rail. Everyone is now able to order their fibre.

Along the way, the "6-12 week project" ended up having a lot of delays due to various works, Covid and lock-down issues as well as weather, communications and system failures. In all, it has taken almost 20 months to do all the work across 280 homes in and around Westerleigh, from the south fringes of Yate, all the way up to Pucklechurch!

All of the postcodes below where included in the build and are now no longer necessary to use the old, degraded copper lines for their internet, but instead can now have access with future-proof fibre.

What happens next?

All residents can now talk to their existing or new internet providers to get their installations done. Openreach engineers will come out again to connect your house to the fibre in the road. This can be underground or overhead. Usually, it is in the same location as your existing phone copper wires. Fibre internet will NOT use your phone and therefore does not need the copper lines nor pay phone line rental unless you need a hard line and VoIP (Voice over Internet) isn't something you want to do.